printSatire—caricatures included—is a highly civilized and refined way of exposing ‘folly, vice, or stupidity,’ to follow the dictionary. The dictionary defines satire as ‘a literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.’ Writers, this one included, have instantiated in writing the questions the cartoons of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo posed in pictures.
With a cartoon, a subset of satire, ‘the subject’s distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect,’ so as to bring to the fore the illustrator’s perspective. The Charlie Hebdo satirical spoofing, like the 12 Jyllands-Posten cartoons before it, did not in the least exaggerate the connection between the example the prophet set, his teachings, including the exhortation to Jihad, and the violence that convulses a critical mass of Muslims.