PARIS — A firebombing that destroyed the offices of a French satirical weekly that “invited” the Prophet Muhammad to be its guest editor was denounced Wednesday by Muslim leaders and politicians from all sides.
But behind the public show of unity was a silent fear that the spoof could trigger a wave of violent protests among western Europe’s largest Muslim population — and beyond.
No one was injured in the blaze that started about 1 a.m. in the offices of Charlie Hebdo in eastern Paris, hours before the issue featuring a caricature of Muhammad on its front page hit the newsstands.
“Everything will be done to find those behind this attack,” said Interior Minister Claude Gueant, visiting the newspapers’ burned and disheveled offices.
The director of the weekly, who goes by the name Charb, called the issue “a joke” and defiantly held up a copy of the paper as he stood amid the rubble. He vowed that next week’s issue would be published.
“We’ll do it with pencils and paper,” said one writer, Patrick Pelloux, on the i-Tele TV station.
The latest issue of Charlie Hebdo, with its typically cutting humor, focused on last week’s victory of a once- banned Islamist party in Tunisia’s first free elections and last month’s decision by Libya’s new leaders that Sharia, or Islamic legislation, will be the main source of law in post- Khadafy Libya.
Charb said a Molotov cocktail lobbed into the offices caused the fire. He blamed the attack on “radical stupid people who don’t know what Islam is.”
