Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Mali … France continues to be the target of criticism from the Arab-Muslim world. On Friday, they were tens of thousands of people, in many countries, to demonstrate against France, to burn effigies of Emmanuel Macron or to call for a boycott of French products. The reason for their anger does not change: they protest France’s position on the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The protests erupted after Emmanuel Macron’s statements defending these caricatures of the prophet of Islam as part of freedom of expression following the beheading near Paris by a Muslim of a teacher who had shown his class of such designs. Islam, in its strict interpretation, prohibits any representation of Muhammad. On Friday, the main protests took place in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Other smaller ones took place in India, the Middle East, the Maghreb and Mali.
Calls to “punish” Emmanuel Macron
In Dhaka, where security has been tightened around the French embassy, more than 40,000 demonstrators marched according to independent observers and the organizers of this march. “We are all soldiers of the Prophet Muhammad!” They chanted at the end of the weekly prayer at the Baitul Mukarram mosque, the largest in Bangladesh.
The protesters reiterated their calls to boycott French products and “punish” Emmanuel Macron. French flags and an effigy of the French president were burned. “France insults two billion Muslims in the world. President Macron must apologize for his crimes,” said Gazi Ataur Rahman, a senior official of Islami Andolan Bangladesh, one of the main Islamist parties in Bangladesh.
In Pakistan, a country where Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan accused Emmanuel Macron of “attacking Islam”, some 2,000 people demonstrated in Islamabad. Religious groups, students and small traders, walked towards the French Embassy screaming “expel the French dog!” or even “behead the blasphemer!”. They were blocked by barricades. Protesters threw stones at the police who responded with tear gas fire.
Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated in Jerusalem
“How dare they disrespect our prophet? A Muslim can sacrifice his head and can also cut off the head of the blasphemer,” said Rasheed Akbar, 34. Another protester, Zahid Malik, called for “expelling the impure French ambassador from the land of the pure”. About 10,000 people marched in Karachi (south), Pakistan’s largest city, and some 3,000 in Lahore (east).
In India, whose Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi supported Emmanuel Macron, the Muslim minority has called for a boycott of French goods. Hundreds of people demonstrated in Bhopal (center). In Srinagar, the main city of Indian Kashmir, around 25 people defied the ban on demonstrations to hang pictures of Emmanuel Macron in the streets and walk over them. In neighboring Afghanistan, the largest gathering took place in Herat (west) where thousands of people shouted “Death to France! Death to Macron!”
In the Middle East, the largest protest took place in the Old City of Jerusalem, where thousands of Palestinians demonstrated. “There is no god but God, Macron is the enemy of God!”, “Muhammad, your nation will not give in!”, They chanted. Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Ekrima Sabri, said he held the French president responsible for acts of violence and “chaos in France because of his provocative statements against Islam”. Hundreds of Palestinians also demonstrated in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where portraits of the French president were trampled and set on fire.
Tensions with the police in Beirut
In Beirut, riot police prevented some 200 demonstrators from advancing towards the residence of the French ambassador. A handful of protesters threw stones at the police who fired tear gas. The secretary general of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, for his part called on the French authorities to correct “a huge mistake” about the cartoons of Muhammad and to avoid a “war against Islam”.
In Libya, protests took place in several cities. In the capital Tripoli, dozens of people burned an effigy of Emmanuel Macron and a French flag. In Mali, a rally was held for the same reasons in Timbuktu. “The fight against terrorism in Mali and the Sahel could suffer from attacks against the fundamental values of the Muslim religion,” Yehia Ould Bana, one of the young people behind this action, told AFP by phone.
At the same time, in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended freedom of expression, while believing that it was “not without limits” and should not “arbitrarily and needlessly hurt” certain communities. Thursday, almost two weeks after the assassination of the French teacher, an attack left three dead in a church in Nice and Emmanuel Macron denounced “an Islamist terrorist attack”. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called on French nationals living abroad to be cautious, saying the threat to French interests was “everywhere”.
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