Renowned political cartoonist Ted Rall says the Islamic extremists who murdered the Paris cartoonists for lampooning the Prophet Muhammad will only make him bolder in pushing the envelope in his own comic strips.
"No, I’m not afraid to do it," Rall said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system – Click Here Now
"I’m definitely more on the meter toward bold and audacious … This is not a job worth doing unless you completely speak your mind and say however you feel, even if it happens to make some people angry."
Twelve people, including a French policeman, were executed by masked gunmen at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine in Paris. It had been firebombed in the past for its cartoons about Muhammad.
"I'm a lot like the editor of Charlie Hebdo who said he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees and yeah, that's where I stand," Rall said.
"I would say that the threat have always been here. As far as I know there's never been an American political cartoonist killed over his work, but that doesn't mean it can't happen or won't happen in the future.
"When you're engaged in political opinion … some people don't like what we have to say and there are always people who are mentally ill."
Rall, whose strips appear in nearly 100 newspapers in the United States, said he had once drawn a cartoon about the Prophet Muhammad, but his distributors refused to send it out.
"I posted it to my own website and sent it out to the newspapers that were willing to publish it which, as far as I know, were very few," he said.
"Part of the real issue here is not so much the cartoonists being timid. The problem really is the newspapers and magazines unwilling to take a chance."
Rall said the "only appropriate response" to the bloodbath in France is to "be more bold."
Will that include cartoons of the prophet?
"It depends if I have the right idea and the right venue and just the right idea comes along. It's always about that," Rall said.
Rall, 51 and a native of Massachusetts, has been involved in plenty of controversy himself.
In 2007, one of his cartoons outraged military supporters with its statement: "In the year 2007, Americans were dumber than dirt. Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.