Magazine aims to reassert its early secular leftwing credentials but in the current climate of religious prejudice these cartoons are not helpful Since Voltaire and notably since the establishment of a secular republic in 1905, France has regarded religions as systems of belief which can be freely criticised and ridiculed. The entrenched tradition of mocking religions and clerical institutions explains the success of long-living publications such as Le Canard Enchaîné (a satirical founded in 1915) and Charlie Hebdo (founded in 1969). Charlie Hebdo was launched by a group of “non-conformists” who had previously run a monthly called Hara Kiri (whose subtitle read: “dumb and nasty”). Charlie Hebdo originally featured cartoons, reports, polemics and jokes. It was profoundly irreverent and had a strong leftwing anarchist leaning

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