Charlie Hebdo is back on the crusade for freedom of expression. While the Danish government presented a bill to Parliament on Friday, September 1, banning public defacing of religious objects, the secular satirical French weekly is criticizing Copenhagen's decision to reinstate the crime of blasphemy. The subject will feature on the front page of the Wednesday, September 6, issue.

The newspaper is launching an appeal to "alert citizens committed to democratic values" alongside eight Scandinavian media outlets. Among them, seven Norwegian newspapers and online sites and one Danish media outlet are criticizing the return of this 334-year-old provision, which was repealed in 2017.

In recent months, there has been one controversy after another in northern Europe, with Iraqi political refugees repeatedly burning Korans in front of the press. As for the Scandinavian far-right, it is exultant at other similar degradations carried out within its ranks. The emotion that swept through the Muslim world at these images of book burning led, for example, to an attack by a hundred people on the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on July 20.

Against this backdrop of heightened tensions, Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard has championed a law designed to "prohibit the inappropriate treatment of objects of significant religious significance to a religious community." Anyone publicly desecrating a Bible, Torah, Koran or religious symbols such as a crucifix will soon face a fine or up to two years imprisonment.

For the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, decimated by an Islamist attack on January 7, 2015, this "ad hoc legislation" is worrying. "It's serious that a European country should decide to reinstate this medieval offense," warned the publication's director, Riss, who sees it as a regression fraught with meaning, all the more symbolically important given that Denmark was the scene of the Muhammad cartoons affair in 2005.

"In doing this, the Danish government is bowing to pressure from Muslim countries," complained Gérard Biard, the weekly's editor-in-chief. "With this scandalous law, the Danish government is being dictated to by authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Taliban Afghanistan," he argued. "The vagueness surrounding this bill, which in reality concerns only the Koran, leaves the door open to all interpretations and therefore all penalties," he feared, even though the Danish Minister of Justice assured that the law will not cover cartoons.

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