Rereading Charlie Hebdo

This chapter takes a more critical approach to Bruce Lincoln’s work, by interrogating the limits of his “irreverent” methodology itself. Focusing on the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and the response by Lincoln and Anthony Yu, this chapter argues that Lincoln perhaps failed to follow through with his own irreverent approach when he French Muslims against this sort of religious satire. Charlie Hebdo was ultimately far more uncompromising in its irreverence than Lincoln himself, raising profound questions not simply about the role of the academic study of religion but about secularism and religious freedom in the twenty-first century.