March 2007: the writing of Charlie Hebdo suggests that I follow the trial of the caricatures and write a book about it, Clerk. My most striking memory of the hearings is not the humanist testimony of the defense, but a sentence from the lawyer of the Islamic World League. In one sentence, and with the best will in the world, he reveals a gap that separates him from Republican traditions in terms of freedom of expression.
“When you make fun of religion it’s as serious… as if we were making fun of Jacques Chirac or another French president.”
In the room we laugh, we look at each other and we are certain that we will not be able to understand each other. On November 2, 2011, the premises of Charlie Hebdo are completely destroyed by a Molotov cocktail. Reactions of support to the newspaper are timid. Worse, public figures sign a petition which claims: “There is no reason to feel sorry for the journalists of Charlie Hebdo !”
On January 7, 2015, a massacre took place on the premises of Charlie Hebdothen in a Hyper Cacher supermarket. On January 11, 1.5 million people took to the streets in support of the newspaper. Here is an image of the interior of the bus which transports the newspaper’s editorial staff.
© / Joann Sfar
On these events, I made a second album If God exists to express the despair of a world where censors triumph. Ten years later, the victory of the fanatics is complete. Not a week goes by without cartoonists, teachers, doctors being attacked or threatened in the name of blasphemy. The trial of Samuel Paty’s assassins ends amid chilling public indifference. I wrote: “If God exists, he won’t kill me for a drawing”, but God has nothing to do with it. What hits us in the face every day is our collective cowardice.
© / Joann Sfar
We have entered the world where when a writer is imprisoned in Algeria for his ideas, French public television hands his microphone to people who overwhelm him and imply that he was looking for it. The change in ten years? No one is expecting any Republican upsurge anymore.