Jordan’s Queen Rania has hit back at a cartoon in French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo depicting drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi as a grown-up refugee committing sexual offences in Germany.
In response Queen Rania posted a cartoon on Facebook and Twitter by Jordan’s Osama Hajjaj depicting the little boy lying face down on the beach alongside an older child with a backpack and finally a doctor.
The queen added the caption: “Aylan could’ve been a doctor, a teacher, a loving parent.”
“Queen Rania gives an elegant and effective rebuttal that refutes the shameful Charlie Hebdo cartoon. She is such a class act!” Facebook user Jane Shartzer commented on the queen’s page.
In September, the queen in a speech in Berlin urged Europeans not to “bolt the door for fear of the unknown” in response to the growing flood into the continent of refugees from Syria’s brutal conflict.
The Charlie Hebdo drawing has triggered sharp criticism on social networks while Aylan’s relatives in Canada expressed “disgust”.
The magazine, contacted on Thursday by AFP, declined to comment.
On January 7, 2015, gunmen killed 12 people in an assault on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, which had been a target for blaspheming Islam.

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