Muslims Riot Around the World to Protest French Cartoons

Tens of thousands of Muslims, from Pakistan to Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, emerged from prayer services to join protests against France on Friday, as the French president’s vote to protect the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad continues to shake the Muslim world.

Hardline Islamic groups across the region have seized upon the French government’s staunch secular stance as an affront to Islam, rallying its supporters and sparking fury.

Demonstrations in the Pakistani capital Islamabad turned violent when some 2,000 people who tried to march towards the French embassy were pushed back by police who fired tear gas and beat the protesters with batons. Crowds of Islamist activists hung an effigy of French President Emmanuel Macron from a highway overpass after furiously hitting it with their shoes. Several protesters were injured in clashes with police when authorities pressed to evict activists from around the embassy.

In the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, some 10,000 supporters of the radical Islamic Tehreek-e-Labbaik party celebrating Mawlid, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, took to the streets. They chanted slogans against France, raised banners and blocked main roads on the way to a Sufi shrine.

“There is only one penalty for blasphemy,” shouted Khadim Hussain Rizvi, an ardent cleric leading the march.

“Decapitation! Decapitation!” the protesters yelled.

The demonstrations, largely led by Islamist parties across the region, come amid growing tensions between France and Muslim-majority nations, which erupted earlier this month when a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who he had shown cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in class.

The images, republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial for the deadly 2015 attack on the publication, have drawn the ire of Muslims around the world who consider the depictions of the prophet blasphemous. On Thursday, a Tunisian wielding a knife and carrying a copy of the Koran killed three people in a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice.

A few hundred protesters in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, flocked to the Palais des Pins, the official residence of the French ambassador to Lebanon, but found their way blocked by lines of policemen in riot gear. Waving black and white flags bearing Islamist insignia, Sunni Islamist activists shouted: “At your service, O prophet of God.” Some threw stones at the police who responded with smoke and tear gas.

The sight of anti-French protests in Lebanon is an embarrassment to Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, who is trying to form a new government that implements a French reform plan. France, the former colonial ruler of Lebanon, has been helping the country chart the course of its growing economic and financial crisis.

In Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, worshipers packed a Shiite mosque after Friday prayers, chanting religious slogans and holding signs satirizing Macron. Turkey has led the regional condemnation of the French president, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s verbal attacks on Macron prompted France to withdraw its ambassador to Turkey last weekend.

Hundreds of Palestinians also protested against Macron in front of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest place in Islam, chanting: “With our souls and with our blood we sacrifice for our prophet Muhammad.” Some young people got into a fight with the Israeli police when they left the esplanade towards the Old City. Israeli police said they dispersed the meeting and detained three people.

Many more occurred in the Gaza Strip, where the militant group Hamas organized demonstrations against France in mosques throughout the territory it controls.

Fathi Hammad, a Hamas official, addressed a demonstration in the Jabaliya refugee camp and vowed to “stand together to confront this criminal offensive that damages the faith of some two billion Muslims,” ​​referring to depictions of the Muslim prophet. . He reiterated the call of the Hamas authorities to the Palestinians to boycott all French products.

One protester, who identified himself as Abu Huzayfa, was equivocal when asked about recent attacks in France in retaliation for the cartoons.

“We are not targeting innocents,” he said. “But those who directly insult our prophet will take responsibility.”

The cries of “Death to France” echoed through the Afghan capital, Kabul, and several other provinces, as thousands filled the streets. The protesters trampled on Macron’s portraits and called on Afghan leaders to close the French embassy, ​​stop French imports and ban French citizens from visiting the country. In the western province of Herat, protesters hoisted an effigy of Macron on a crane and set it on fire.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hezb-i-Islami, an Islamist party, warned Macron that if he does not “control the situation, we are going to a third world war and Europe will be responsible.”

Muslims also demonstrated outside the Middle East, with a large crowd of some 50,000 protesters shouting loudly in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, setting fire to effigies of Macron and holding signs that read: “Say no to Islamophobia”, “Stop the racism “and” Boycott French products. ” . Several hundred protested peacefully in the Ethiopian capital after Friday prayers.

During the past week, protests and calls for a boycott of French products have spread rapidly. Social media has been full of anti-France hashtags. Muslim leaders have strongly criticized France for what they see as the government’s provocative and anti-Muslim stance.

Thursday’s attack in Nice also drew condemnations from leaders of countries that had expressed outrage at the cartoons, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt.

The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, denounced Thursday’s stabbing attack in Nice, which he said is rejected by Islam.

However, in a televised speech on Friday, he criticized French authorities and President Emmanuel Macron for their insistence on defending the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the name of freedom of expression.

Nasrallah said that the concept of freedom of expression should not include “violating the dignity of two billion Muslims.”

“No Muslim in this world can accept to insult his Prophet,” he said.

In a Friday sermon broadcast live on Egyptian state television, the country’s minister of religious donations appeared to denounce any violent retaliation for the cartoons.

“Love for the prophet cannot be expressed by killing, sabotaging or responding to evil with evil,” said Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa, addressing dozens of worshipers at a mosque in Egypt’s Daqahleya province in the Delta.

– Associated Press