I thought it might be useful to talk about Mustapha Ourrad and Zineb El Rhazoui, two of the people who worked for Charlie Hebdo. Ourrad died, but Rhazoui survived; she was on vacation in her native Morocco.
They were Charlie, and still are.
More below the fold.
Sophie Hardach on Mustapha Ourrad and Zineb El Rhazoui:
I haven't seen many articles on the religious and cultural diversity at Charlie Hebdo, whereas I've seen plenty of articles on what this all means for relations between French Muslims and non-Muslims. This is a false divide. Journalists like Zineb El Rhazoui and Mustapha Ourrad have/had a Muslim background, but they clearly, obviously have/had more in common with Charb and Tignous than with their attackers. This is so banal it hurts me to write it, and I'm only writing it because of all that ridiculous talk of the "clash of civilisations". There is no clash of civilisations. Liberty, equality, human rights are not Western privileges. Zineb El Rhazoui said she was hired because of her activism in her native Morocco during the Arab Spring. In 2013 she published a comic book called "The Life of Mohammed" together with Charb, one of the cartoonists. And guess which subject she graduated in? Sociology of religion.
From the French television network
VM TV (in my own very rough translation):
A man of great erudition, and a master of the French language, Mustapha Ourrad served as a copy editor in the drafting of the weekly. Described as "discreet, modest and humble" by his friends and collaborators, his high culture was also praised. Originally from Algeria, near the city of Tizi-Ouzou, he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Kabylia and Berber cultures. A man of great culture, indeed nicknamed "Mustapha Baudelaire" from an early age, he [read, critiqued, and] summarized books [by] Gide [and] Baudelaire.
These were and are Charlie. These are the people that worked at Charlie.