Paris: The French cartoonist Luz, who drew Charlie Hebdo’s cover picture of the Prophet Mohammad after the Islamist killings at the satirical weekly in January, has said he will no longer draw the Prophet.
“He no longer interests me,” he told Les Inrockuptibles in an interview published on its website on Wednesday.
“I’ve got tired of it, just as I got tired of drawing Sarkozy. I’m not going to spend my life drawing them.” Islamist militants claiming to be avenging the Prophet killed 12 people when they attacked the Paris offices of the irreverent weekly, known for lampooning Islam along with other religions.
For Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet (PBUH) is blasphemous, but Charlie Hebdo’s next edition carried on its cover Luz’s cartoon of a tearful Mohammad holding a “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) sign under the words “All is forgiven”.
In an outpouring of solidarity and concern for freedom of expression across France, it sold several million copies rather than its usual circulation of 60,000.
“The terrorists did not win,” Luz told the magazine. “They will have won if the whole of France continues to be scared.”
