Charb Quotes & Sayings

So let's talk about Islam the way we talk about everything else. — Charb

Our job isn't to defend freedom of speech, but without freedom of speech we are dead. We can't live in a country without freedom of speech. I prefer to die than live like a rat. — Charb

According to the dictionary, "Islam" means "submission" in Arabic. A Muslim is someone who is submissive to God. Why does he submit? Because his God is the best, the brawniest, the nattiest, but most of all because, if he says anything to the contrary, he will burn in hell until well after the end of the world. The believer is thus encouraged not to screw around with God under penalty of something worse than death for all eternity. — Charb

I would rather die standing than live kneeling — Charb

The people who start howling the minute Charlie Hebdo publishes a drawing of a self-styled Islamic terrorist toe a particular line. They suggest that by caricaturing an Islamic terrorist, the cartoonist is really symbolizing all Muslims. So long as the terrorist is identifiable as a Muslim, the cartoonist must be mocking all Islam. If you draw a jihadist doing what jihadists do, you are dragging the billions of faithful through the mud. If you draw Muhammad denouncing the extremists among his followers, you're insulting all Muslims. The terrorist must be stripped of any element that could identify him as a Muslim, while it is quite simply forbidden to represent Muhammad at all. If portraying an Islamist terrorist as grotesque is Islamophobic, that's the same as saying that all Muslims are terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. — Charb

If tomorrow the Muslims of France were to convert to Catholicism or renounce all religion, it wouldn't make the least bit of difference to the racists - they would continue to hold these foreigners or French citizens of foreign descent responsible for every affliction. — Charb

There's nothing surprising about a Catholic being Islamophobic or a Muslim being Cathophobic - that is precisely what their religious shepherds ask them to be. Disapproval of the other guy's religion is the daily bread of clerics of all creeds, and nobody seems to be bothered by it. Priests, imams, and rabbis have the right to be Islamophobic, Judeophobic, or Cathophobic without reprimand. — Charb

A drawing has never killed anyone. — Charb

When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it. — Charb

Being afraid of Islam is no doubt moronic, absurd, and plenty of other things as well, but it's not a crime. — Charb

criticizing an ideology, including a religious ideology, however vociferously, is different from inducing hatred of a people or persons. — Charb

I prefer to die standing than to live on my knees, — Charb

In caving to an extremist minority that represents no one but itself, you acknowledge its power. — Charb

Charlie Hebdo has been sued a good dozen times by the General Alliance against Racism and for Respect of French and Christian Identity (AGRIF), an organization of Catholic fundamentalists who long maintained close ties with the National Front. — Charb

If "atheophobia" denotes the violent criticism of atheism, I invite my Bible-thumping friends to sign up without fear for their safety. Don't reserve your insults to Reason for the privacy of those tombs of thought you call temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques! Publish newspapers and blogs, stage plays and puppet shows, to mock what you see as the absurdity of life without God, of life without your Supreme Blankie! — Charb

We have to go on until Islam is made as ho-hum as Catholicism. — Charb

God is sacred only to those who believe in him. If you wish to insult or offend God, you have to be sure that he exists. — Charb