Clerics appeal for peace as French magazine risks Muslim fury

21 September, 2012

While protests against the anti-Islam movie turned violent in many Islamic countries, Muslims in France are appealing people not to react to the movie and the cartoons of Prophet published by a French magazine in a violent way. They are using the public address system and mosque loudspeakers to spread the message across the Muslim community in the country.

FRENCH EMBASSIES and schools remained closed in 20 countries on September 20, fearing backlash from Muslim communities after one of the French magazines published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, inflaming the already volatile situation.

After the recent violent demonstrations that claimed the life of US ambassador to Libya, French government maintained that the magazine could have thought of the repurcussions before going ahead with publishing the cartoons.

The magazine, Charlie Hebdo, printed on September 20 a cartoon of the controversial and poorly-made anti-Islam film 'Innocence of Muslims'. While the demonstrations have taken over the whole Islamic world, Muslims in France are spreading a message of peace saying that they do not want violence.

Talking to the AFP, Dali Boubakeur said, Rector of Paris Mosque said, “We are fighting the caricatures as vigorously as possible. I know the man is the only animal that makes the same mistake twice. To start again with the same non-sense, the same stupidity, the same ignominy seems to us to point at some kind of psychiatric problem.”

A lawyer, Chems-eddine Hafiz talked about the freedom of speech and said, “Freedom of speech has its limits and concerns freedom of belief and freedom of conscious. Muslims are extremely affected and upset about this aggression and we are aware of that but we are not going to respond to provocation in an untimely way.”