Soir editor fired over Muhammad cartoons

In a day of rapid developments, the managing editor of France Soir has been fired for publishing the cartoons of Muhammad. The story is at the BBC:

[The paper’s owner], Raymond Lakah [is Lakah a Muslim?], said he had removed managing editor Jacques Lefranc “as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual”.

Mr Lakah said: “We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication.”

A reader writes:

You wondered if Raymond Lakah was Muslim. He appears to be. He is a Franco-Egyptian businessman who emerged suddenly to buy the newspaper which was bankrupt. He is known as a wheeler-dealer who also owned two airlines and who has been in and out of court on various charges relating to his businesses, but he in turn filed a complaint about the ethics of the judge. He claims he wants to return to Egypt to enter politics.

I wasn’t really able to do a thorough search. Most of the articles about him deal with his machinations in the courts and his unexpected role as “saviour” of France-Soir (which was never a very good paper anyway).

But another reader says:

Raymond Lakah is not a Muslim but a Coptic Christian. As you may know, Copts are persecuted in Egypt by the Muslims and Lakah may have been threatened that if he did not do anything about the cartoons then something might have happened to his family back in Egypt. Hugh Fitzgerald points out that Lakah is a shady businessman of sorts who is probably fronting for the real source of his money. He most likely works very closely with Muslims but he himself is not a Muslim.

Here is a story at an Arab news website about Lakah’s business and financial woes. Notice the name of the Egyptian bureaucrat at the end of the article: Hitler Tantawi. I am told he has a brother named Mussolini Tantawi. I guess they’re both Islamofascists and Islamonazis.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 01, 2006 09:21 PM | Send