Fresh protests erupt across Muslim world

In France, where the publication of cartoons denigrating the Prophet stoked anger over an anti-Islam video made in California, authorities banned all protests over the issueMuslim protests against insults to the Prophet turned violent in Pakistan, where at least 15 people were killed yesterday but remained mostly peaceful in other Islamic countries. In France, where the publication of cartoons denigrating the Prophet stoked anger over an anti-Islam video made in California, authorities banned all protests over the issue. “There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up,” said Interior Minister Manuel Valls. Tunisia’s Islamist-led government also banned protests against the images published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Four people were killed and almost 30 wounded last week when the US embassy was stormed in a protest over the film. Many Western and Muslim politicians and clerics have appealed for calm, denouncing those behind the anti-Islam film and cartoons, but also condemning violent reactions to them. At street level, Muslims enraged by attacks on their faith spoke of a culture war against those in the West who put rights to freedom of expression before religious sensitivities. “They hate him (the Prophet) and show this through their continued works in the West, through their writings, cartoons, films and the way they launch war against him in schools,” said Abdessalam Abdullah, a preacher at a mosque in Beirut’s Palestinian refugee camp of Bourj al-Barajneh. Western diplomatic missions in Muslim nations tightened security ahead of Friday prayers. France ordered embassies, schools and cultural centres to close in a score of countries and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said some would stay shut over the weekend. In Pakistan, tens of thousands of people joined protests encouraged by the government in several cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan and Muzaffarabad. The bloodiest unrest erupted in the southern city of Karachi, where 10 people were killed, including three policemen, and more than 100 wounded, according to Allah Bachayo Memon, spokesman of the chief minister of Sindh province. He said about 20 vehicles, three banks and five cinemas were set on fire. In neighbouring Afghanistan, police contacted religious and community leaders to try to prevent bloodshed. Protests in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif only attracted a few hundred people and no violence was reported. About 10,000 Islamists gathered in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka after Friday prayers, chanting slogans and burning US and French flags and an effigy of US President Barack Obama. Protests went off peacefully in the Arab world, where last week several embassies were attacked and the US envoy to Libya was killed in an initial burst of unrest over the film. A few dozen Egyptians protested near the French embassy in Cairo, but were kept away from the premises by police deployed in large numbers to avoid a repeat of violence at the US embassy last week. Mainstream Islamic leaders in Egypt have expressed outrage, but urged a peaceful response. In remarks to Reuters, the leader of the Nour Party, one of the Islamist parties in Egypt, echoed calls for the criminalisation of insults to religions including Islam. But he said it was important to separate between an offender and an entire society. “The reasonable people in the West outnumber the thoughtless,” said Emad Abdel Ghafour. “Contact should be kept up with the reasonable people,” he added. “It is unreasonable that reactions come through arson and killing. We all suffer and are affected by these acts,” he said. In Yemen, where the US embassy was stormed last week, several hundred Shia protesters chanted anti-American slogans, but riot police blocked the route to the embassy. Anger over the film brought several thousand Shias and Sunnis together in a rare show of sectarian unity in Iraq’s southern city of Basra, where they burnt US and Israeli flags. From : Gulf times.