The offices of French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo have been destroyed by a petrol bomb.
The attack came after the publication named Prophet Muhammad as ‘editor-in-chief’ for it’s last issue, to celebrate Islamist party Ennahda’s political victory in Tunisia.
The front cover of the issue showed an image of Muhammad saying, “100 lashes if you are not dying of laughter.”
Editor in chief and cartoonist Charb told reporters that Islam will not be excluded regarding their freedom of expression.
He said: “If we can poke fun at everything in France, if we can talk about anything in France apart from Islam or the consequences of Islamism, that is annoying.”
Charb, full name Stephane Charbonnier, also told reporters that French Muslims are not to blame, but rather “idiot extremists.”
The issue was intended to celebrate Ennahda’s electoral victory last month.
The Islamist party won the elections in Tunisia and have vowed to work with the country’s liberal parties, encouraging gender equality.
The Editor also told reporters the magazine’s Facebook and Twitter pages were targeted with abuse the day before the controversial issue’s release.
The issue was renamed ‘Charia Hebro’, a play on the word ‘Sharia’, but Charb the AFP news agency that that he is not trying to be provocative with the name or the accompanying image.
“We simply feel like doing our job as usual. The only difference this week is that Muhammad is on the cover and it’s pretty rare to put him on the cover,” he said.
In 2007, Charlie Hebdo’s then editor was accused of insulting Muslims by featuring cartoons of Muhammad, which had previously appeared in a Danish newspaper two years earlier.
The 12 images, drawn by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in 2005, included a depiction of the prophet with a bomb in his turban.
The cartoons, which appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, resulted in violent protests in 2006 when the reactions built up in January and February of that year.
The images were also targeted by Islamist groups who branded the images as offensive.
