France braced for cartoon backlash

A FRENCH satirical magazine has further fuelled Muslim anger by portraying the Prophet Muhammad naked in cartoons, adding to the sense of indignation caused by a film depiction of him as a lecherous fool.

The drawings in satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo yesterday risked exacerbating a crisis that has seen the storming of US and other Western embassies, the killing of the US ambassador to Libya and a deadly suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

Riot police were deployed to protect the magazine’s Paris offices after it hit the news stands with a cover showing an Orthodox Jew pushing the turban wearing figure of Muhammad in a wheelchair.

On the inside pages, several caricatures of the prophet showed him naked. One, titled Muhammad: a Star is Born, depicted a bearded figure crouching over to display his buttocks and genitals.

The French government, which had urged the weekly not to print the cartoons, said it was temporarily shutting premises including embassies and schools in 20 countries tomorrow, when protests sometimes break out after Muslim prayers.

“This is a disgraceful and hateful, useless and stupid provocation,” Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Paris Mosque, said. “[But] we are not Pavlov’s animals to react at each insult.”

Arab League secretary-general Nabil Elaraby called the drawings provocative and outrageous but said those who were offended by them should “use peaceful means to express their firm rejection”.

Tunisia’s governing Islamist party, Ennahda, condemned the cartoons as an act of “aggression” against Muhammad. It urged Muslims, in responding to it, to avoid falling into a trap designed by “suspicious parties to derail the Arab Spring and turn it into a conflict with the West”.
In Lebanon, Salafist cleric Sheikh Nabil Rahim said the incident would raise tensions that were already dangerously high.

“We will try to keep things managed and peaceful, but these things easily get out of hand. I fear there could more targeting of foreigners, and this is why I wish they would not persist with these provocations,” he said.

In the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles, one person was slightly hurt when two masked men threw a small explosive device through the window of a kosher Jewish supermarket, a police source said, adding it was too early to link the incident to the cartoons.

The posting of a short film on YouTube last week that mocked Muhammad as a womanising buffoon has sparked protests in many countries, some of them deadly.

“We have the impression that it’s officially allowed for Charlie Hebdo to attack the Catholic far-right but we cannot poke fun at fundamental Islamists,” said editor Stephane Charbonnier, who drew the front-page cartoon.

“It shows the climate – everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want – to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave,” he said.

One cartoon, in reference to the scandal over a French magazine’s decision to publish photos of the topless Duchess of Cambridge, showed a topless, bearded character with the caption: “Riots in Arab countries after photos of Mrs Muhammad are published”.

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius criticised the magazine’s move as a provocation.

A foreign ministry spokesman said France was closing its embassies, consulates, cultural centres and schools in 20 countries tomorrow as a “precautionary measure”.