The Iran regime called this Wednesday “insulting” the decision of the French satirical magazine charlie hebdo to open one cartoon competition of the supreme leader of the country, the ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The act insulting and indecent from a French publication on caricatures of religious and political authority will not be left without an effective and decisive response”, said the Iranian foreign minister, Hosein Amirabdolahianin a message on his account on the social network Twitter.
“We will not allow the French government to cross the line. They have taken the wrong path, definitely.”he added, while recalling that the Iranian authorities had previously included Charlie Hebdo on their sanctions list.
The satirical magazine announced on December 9 a “international competition to produce caricatures of the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran”whom he described as “a symbol of the backward thinking, narrow-mindedness and intolerance of religious power”.
In this sense, he asked cartoonists to “support iranians who are fighting for freedom ridiculing their religious leader from another era and consigning him to historical oblivion.” “Ayatollah (Ruhollah) Khomeini’s political ambition to create an Islamic Republic has come to an end, demonstrating the absurdity of trying to run a modern society with religious precepts,” he said.
For this reason, Charlie Hebdo pointed out that “the freedom to which all human beings aspire is incompatible with the archaic of religious thought and the submission to all supposedly spiritual authority, of which Khamenei is the most deplorable example”.
Charlie Hebdo has announced this Wednesday a selection of winning cartoons and has highlighted on his Twitter account that in recent weeks he has received “more than 300 drawings and thousands of threats”.
The magazine became internationally known after the publication in 2006 of some cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which had originally appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. In 2015, its headquarters were the target of a attempt that ended with twelve dead. January 7 marks the seventh anniversary of the terrorist act.
For this reason, the magazine has published an editorial in which it has explained that the contest “is also a way of remember that the reasons why Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors were murdered years ago are still relevant, unfortunately”. “Those who refuse to submit to the dictates of religions assume the risk of paying with their lives,” he lamented.
“The cartoons of the supreme guide that we have received are the extension of what the murdered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists always denounced,” he explained, while stressing that “religious intolerance has not said its last word”.
“The designs we have received come from the four corners of the world, which demonstrates, to those who still doubt it, the universal dimension of caricature and the respect for freedom in the face of religious arbitrariness”, pointed out the magazine, which has added that, since there is no prize for this contest, positions have not been awarded to the winners.
In this way, he pointed out that adopting that decision would have “undervalued the rest of the drawings” and asked himself “what reward would be equal to the value of saying ‘no’ to religious tyrants”. “There is something that no one can buy or give away, for the good reason that it is priceless: freedom, simply”, he concluded.
(With information from Europa Press)
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Source-www.infobae.com