I think that the world has gotten past the problem of Muhammed being depicted in art as a direct result of this attack. I just wish it didn't take murders to cause that realization.
It might be fairly difficult to get abroad, at least at first (they are already planning for reprints, through a duration of 8 weeks, if demand is there). I can normally find it easily here when I want to, but this week my hopes to grab a copy are low.
I read an interview with a spokesperson and she was saying the special "foreign editions" would be, for practical reasons, distributed mostly through the regular channels, ie: to the newsstands abroad that are already set up to receive the weekly magazine (and there are few outside Francophonie - and even then we're mostly talking Belgium, Switzerland, Québec, not French-speaking Africa). For the US I imagine it will be possible to find it mostly in NYC. To give you an idea, they were talking of about 1000 copies in English for the UK, 95% of which will go to a handful of newsstands in London. The vast majority of the 3 million copies will be in French and distributed in France/Benelux/Switzerland.
Apparently quite a few newsstand chains in the UK/US have announced they wouldn't carry it, either because they can't get copies, or because they object to it.
Oh well, at least a few of the big media outlet in the US/Canada/UK have finally seen reason and printed the new cover, but quite a few have censored it (sigh).
I see that a few liberal Muslim religious leaders have jumped on the bandwagon and spoken publicly to say freedom of expression is more important than the offensive nature of the cartoons (and basically to "get used to them"
but so far it looks like it will spark yet another wave of outrage. In the UK one radical preacher/sharia-law expert in particular was in "fatwa" mode and making threats about reprisals, alluding to the death penalty. Some things have not changed...
