While "Charlie Hebdo" republished Wednesday, the opening day of the trial of the January 2015 attacks, the cartoons of Mohammed who had made the satirical weekly the target of radical Islamists, Tareq Oubrou, imam of Bordeaux, maintains the newspaper.

"We do not respond to cartoons with bullets and punches," he said on Europe 1.

INTERVIEW

The painful memory of the attacks of January 2015 resurfaced on Wednesday in favor of a double news.

First with a historic trial which opens, for a minimum of two months, in Paris.

14 people are on trial for having helped the Kouachi brothers and Amédy Coulibaly, responsible for the deaths of 17 people on January 7, 8 and 9, 2015. Then,

Charlie Hebdo

, of which 10 members were murdered at the time, who decides to republish the cartoons of Muhammad which had made the satirical weekly one of the privileged targets of Islamist extremists.

A courageous gesture for some, a provocation for others.

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"It is quite legitimate to republish these cartoons to say here we are, we continue to capture and the caricature is part of our French culture. Take it or leave it", reacts Tareq Oubrou, the imam of Bordeaux, on Europe 1. "That's what makes our democracy. We don't respond to caricatures with bullets and punches, but with thought and caricature. I think that comedy, humor, caricature pacify relationships between people who do not necessarily share the same opinions. "

"Muslims are hit twice because it is a crime that was committed in the name of their religion"

And for Muslims who would be shocked by these cartoons - Islam forbids representing the Prophet Muhammad in any form - Tareq Oubrou has a tip.

"I call for indifference. That is to say, Muslims are not going to applaud the cartoons. But they should not be excited and take aggressive acts either," calls the essayist, author in 2019 Call for Reconciliation.

Muslim faith and values ​​of the French Republic.

The imam of Bordeaux does not forget the essential.

"The caricatures, that refers us rather to the drama which struck the artists of these caricatures. This is what we must remember, that of the people who were killed because they made caricatures", insists Tareq Oubrou.

"In addition, most Muslims have a hard time with this situation. Muslims are hit twice because it is a crime that was committed in the name of their religion, because they are citizens like everyone else. France has been hit, including Muslims, through, through this crime perpetrated against Charlie Hebdo, freedom of expression. "