“ Liberation called me and said, `Crumb, can you do a cartoon for us? About what you think about this, you know, you are a major cartoonist, and you live in France.´ So I thought about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m doing the dishes, or whatever,  I was thinking, `What should I do for that cartoon…´ I had a lot of ideas.  Other people come up with these, you know, clever cartoons that comment on it, like…This one guy did a cartoon showing a bloody dead body laying there, and a radical Muslim standing over him with a Kalashnikov, saying, `He drew first!´ Stuff like that. That’s good, that’s clever, you know, I like that. But, me? I gotta like, you know, when I do something, it has to be more personal. I said, first: `I don’t have the courage to make an insulting cartoon of Muhammed.´ …..

… Then I thought, `OK, I’m the Cowardly Cartoonist … As a Cowardly Cartoonist, I can’t make some glib comment like that, you know? I have to, like, make fun of myself.  So instead of drawing the face of Muhammed, I drew the ass of Muhammed. But then I had myself saying, in small lettering, `Actually, this is the ass of my friend of Mohamid Bakshi, who’s a film director in Los Angeles, California.´ So if they come at me, I’m gonna say, `No, look, it’s not Muhammed the Prophet, it’s this guy, Mohamid Bakshi.´ So, you know.”

Robert Crumb in conversation with Celia Farber, 10.1.2015  (Source: New York Observer)