LE MONDE, FRENCH SECULAR REPUBLICANISM AND 'THE MOHAMMED CARTOONS AFFAIR': Journalistic 'Re-Presentation' of the Sacred Right to Offend.

This article explores how France's leading newspaper, Le Monde, 're-presented', or presented anew, French secular republican ideology and the right of free expression at the height of the 'affaire des caricatures de Mahomet' (the Mohammed cartoons affair). This global crisis, which was spawned by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, took on a specific French coloration when French newspapers republished the cartoons and added their own caricatures to the lot. It was found that Le Monde used the crisis to restate French free speech values, and placed the controversy squarely within the framework of French secular republicanism where the right to blaspheme and offend is sacrosanct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]