The Volokh Conspiracy

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Volokh Conspiracy

"I live under French law. I don't live under Quranic law."

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


Words in 2012 from Charlie Hebdo chief editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of 12 people murdered today in a terrorist attack on the magazine offices. Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical magazine that had, among other things, published cartoons of Mohammed (as well as, according to AP, having "past covers includ[ing] retired Pope Benedict XVI in amorous embrace with a Vatican guard; former French President Nicolas Sarkozy looking like a sick vampire; and an Orthodox Jew kissing a Nazi soldier").

According to CNN,

A video taken by a journalist for the Premieres Lignes agency shows the gunmen shouting "God is great!" as they began the attack, Le Monde reported. They also cried "We have avenged the Prophet!"

Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and a Visiting Fellow (Senior Fellow starting May 2024) at the Hoover Institution (Stanford). Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any educational institution.