The publication, irreverent and stridently non-conformist in tone, is strongly secularist, antireligious,[6] and left-wing, publishing articles that mock Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and various other groups as local and world news unfolds.

[8][9][10] The cover of a 2011 issue retitled Charia Hebdo (French for Sharia Weekly), featured a cartoon of Muhammad, whose depiction is forbidden in most interpretations of Islam, with some Persian exceptions.

According to the BBC, France has seen "the apparent desire of some younger, often disaffected children or grandchildren of immigrant families not to conform to western, liberal lifestyles – including traditions of religious tolerance and free speech".

[57] Another female columnist present at the time, crime reporter Sigolène Vinson, survived; one of the shooters aimed at her but spared her, saying, "I'm not killing you because you are a woman", and telling her to convert to Islam, read the Quran and wear a veil.

Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, suggested that the motive of the attackers was "absolutely clear: trying to shut down a media organisation that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad".

[74] Several people at the meeting were unharmed, including book designer Gérard Gaillard, who was a guest, and staff members, Sigolène Vinson,[90] Laurent Léger, and Éric Portheault.

[c] French citizens born in Paris to Algerian immigrants, the brothers were orphaned at a young age after their mother's apparent suicide and placed in a foster home in Rennes.

[100] Chérif, also known as Abu Issen, was part of an informal gang that met in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris to perform military-style training exercises and sent would-be jihadists to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

[106] On 28 March 2008, Chérif was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, for recruiting fighters for militant Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group in Iraq.

[132] During the standoff in Dammartin-en-Goële, another jihadist named Amedy Coulibaly, who had met the brothers in prison,[139] took hostages in a kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in east Paris, killing those of Jewish faith while leaving the others alive.

[141] The police initially identified the 18-year-old brother-in-law of Chérif Kouachi, a French Muslim student of North African descent and unknown nationality, as a third suspect in the shooting, accused of driving the getaway car.

[147] On 2 September 2020, fourteen people went on trial in Paris charged with providing logistical support and procuring weapons for those who carried out both the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege.

Of the fourteen on trial Mohamed and Mehdi Belhoucine and Amedy Coulibaly's girlfriend, Hayat Boumeddiene, were tried in absentia, having fled to either Iraq or Syria in the days before the attacks took place.

[158] On the night of 8 January, police commissioner Helric Fredou, who had been investigating the attack, committed suicide in his office in Limoges while he was preparing his report shortly after meeting with the family of one of the victims.

The assailant, a Tunisian man posing as an asylum-seeker from Iraq or Syria, wearing a fake explosive belt charged police officers with a meat cleaver while shouting "Allahu Akbar!"

[166][167][168][169] On 14 February 2015 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a public event called "Art, blasphemy and the freedom of expression", was organised to honour victims of the attack in January against the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

[172] Hours after the shooting, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz said that Spain's anti-terrorist security level had been upgraded and that the country was sharing information with France in relation to the attacks.

[g] RT reported that a million people attended a demonstration in Grozny, the capital city of the Chechen Republic, protesting the depictions of Muhammad in Charlie Hebdo and proclaiming that Islam is a religion of peace.

International leaders including Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Stephen Harper, Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu, Angela Merkel, Matteo Renzi, David Cameron, Mark Rutte and Tony Abbott offered statements of condolence and outrage.

[262] Al Jazeera English editor and executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr attacked Charlie Hebdo as the work of solipsists, and sent out a staff-wide e-mail where he argued: "Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile."

[271] Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, and Qatar all denounced the incident, as did Egypt's Al-Azhar University, the leading Sunni institution of the Muslim world.

[282] Just hours after the shootings, the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Muslim born in Morocco, condemned Islamist extremists living in the West who "turn against freedom" and told them to "fuck off".

[292] The massacre was praised by various militant and terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula,[73] the Taliban in Afghanistan,[293][294] Al-Shabaab,[295] Boko Haram,[296] and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

[306] La Provence reported that a fight broke out in the l'Arc à Orange high school during the minute of silence, as a result of a student post on a social network welcoming the atrocities.

[307] Le Point reported on the "provocations" at a grade school in Grenoble, and cited a girl who said "Madame, people won't let the insult of a drawing of the prophet pass by, it is normal to take revenge.

"[311] Salman Rushdie, who is on the al-Qaeda hit list[18][73] and received death threats over his novel The Satanic Verses, said, "I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity ... religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.

[314] American journalist David Brooks wrote an article titled "I Am Not Charlie Hebdo" in The New York Times, arguing that the magazine's humor was childish, but necessary as a voice of satire.

[315] American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky views the popularisation of the Je suis Charlie slogan by politicians and media in the West as hypocritical, comparing the situation to the NATO bombing of the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters in 1999, when 16 employees were killed.

Through the drone attacks had been "murdered thousands of innocent people", in the concerned countries, this created helplessness, rage and hatred: "Thereby we prepare the ground for the terror, we officially want to fight."

[325] Holly Dagres of Al-Monitor wrote that Khamenei's followers "actively spammed Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and even Tumblr with links" to the letter with the aim of garnering the attention of people in the West.