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A protester in Rawalpindi calls for a boycott of French products
Photo: SOHAIL SHAHZAD / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
In Pakistan and Iran there is growing displeasure about the republication of controversial Mohammed cartoons in the French satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo".
In Pakistan, thousands of people took to the streets in anti-French demonstrations on Friday after the government sharply criticized the reprint of the cartoons.
Tehran condemned the cartoons as "provocation".
On the occasion of the start of the trial against alleged helpers of the attack on the editorial staff of "Charlie Hebdo", the satire newspaper had reprinted the Mohammed cartoons in a special edition this week, because of which it had become the target of Islamists.
The assassins who carried out the attack on the satire newspaper in Paris on January 7, 2015, killing twelve people, had justified their act with the cartoons.
The drawings show, among other things, the prophet Mohammed with a bomb on his head instead of a turban.
"We have to send a strong message to the French that this disrespect for our beloved Prophet will not be tolerated," said protester Mohammad Ansari during a rally in the city of Lahore in eastern Pakistan.
The demonstrations were led by the Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik, which has organized large and often violent protests in the past over alleged blasphemy.
Images of the prophet are forbidden in Islam.
Insulting religion can be punished with the death penalty under Pakistan's strict blasphemy laws.
Even before the protests, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had written on the online service Twitter that the aim of the cartoons was to "hurt the feelings of billions of Muslims".
For Tehran, the cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in 2005, represent an "insult" to the more than one billion Muslims worldwide. Any disrespectful portrayal of Mohammed or other prophets is "absolutely unacceptable," the Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday evening.
On Wednesday the trial of 14 alleged accomplices of the attackers opened in Paris, who, in addition to the "Charlie Hebdo" editorial staff, had also attacked a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
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