PARIS, France — A French satirical magazine on Wednesday published a series of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, setting off a new wave of outrage among Muslims and condemnation from French leaders amid widening unrest over an amateur video that has provoked violence throughout the Islamic world.
The illustrations, some of which depicted Muhammad naked and in pornographic poses, hit newsstands across the country Wednesday and were met with a swift rebuke from the government of Francois Hollande, which had earlier urged the magazine, Charlie Hebdo, not to publish the cartoons, particularly in the current tense environment.
“In France, there is a principle of freedom of expression, which should not be undermined,” Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, said in a French radio interview. “In the present context, given this absurd video that has been aired, strong emotions have been awakened in many Muslim countries. Is it really sensible or intelligent to pour oil on the fire?”
In the interview on France Info radio, Fabius announced that, as a precaution, France planned to close its embassies in 20 countries on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, which has become an occasion for many to express their anger although “no threats have been made against any institutions.” A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the closures would affect French consulates, cultural centers and schools as well.
In Egypt, representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood denounced the cartoons as blasphemous and hurtful, and called upon the French judiciary to condemn the magazine.
Mahmoud Ghozlan, a spokesman for the group, noted that French law prohibits Holocaust denial and suggested that similar provisions might be made for comments deemed blasphemous under Islam.
“If anyone doubts the Holocaust happened, they are imprisoned,” Ghozlan told Reuters. “It is not fair or logical” that the same not be the case for insults to Islam, he said.
Religious and political leaders in other majority Muslim nations also denounced the cartoons but called for calm. Tunisia’s governing Islamist party, Ennahda, warned believers against falling into a trap set by “suspicious parties to derail the Arab Spring and turn it into a conflict with the West,” Reuters reported.
Charlie Hebdo’s website was not functioning Wednesday, the result of a computer attack, according to the editorial director, Stephane Charbonnier. A Pakistani technology news outlet, ProPakistani, reported that a Pakistani hacker group claimed it had blocked the site because of its “blasphemous contents” about Muhammad.
On Wednesday, a large contingent of police officers was dispatched to guard the offices of Charlie Hebdo in eastern Paris.
The magazine’s headquarters, not far from its present offices, were badly damaged by a firebomb in November after it published a spoof issue “guest edited” by Muhammad to salute the victory of an Islamist party in Tunisian elections. Charbonnier, the editorial director, has been under police protection since.
Neither he nor the publication had received threats as a result of the most recent issue of the magazine, he said.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the government would prohibit a series of protests that had been planned in several French cities for Saturday — one week after a group of around 250 people staged a largely nonviolent protest of the amateur film disparaging the prophet, Innocence of Muslims, outside the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
“There is no reason for us to let a conflict that doesn’t concern France come into our country,” Ayrault told RTL radio. “We are a republic that has no intention of being intimidated by anyone.”
Charbonnier contested that decision, which he called “shocking.”
“The government needs to be consistent,” he said. “Why not coordinated in advance.
“The best information we have now indicates that this was an opportunistic attack,” Olsen, who cautioned that the investigation isn’t finished, said at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday in Washington.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the committee, told Olsen she had come to “the opposite conclusion” about the origin of the attack, noting the heavy weapons including rocket-propelled grenades used in Libya.
“I just don’t think people come to protest equipped with RPGs and other heavy weapons,” she said.
Meanwhile, an actress who appears in the film is suing the filmmaker for fraud and slander and is suing Google to try to get the movie’s trailer removed from the Internet.
Cindy Lee Garcia’s lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles claims the actress was duped by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind Innocence of Muslims who has been forced into hiding since its 14-minute trailer rose to prominence last week. She was unaware of the film’s anti-Muslim content, and the pages of the script she received had no mention of the prophet Muhammad, according to her complaint.
The lawsuit states Garcia responded to an ad and thought she was appearing in an ancient Egyptian adventure film, which was altered to give it an anti-Islamic message.
Information for this article was contributed by Nicola Clark and Scott Sayare of The New York Times; by Christopher Stephen and James Rowley of Bloomberg News; and by Anthony McCartney of The Associated Press.
should they prohibit these people from expressing themselves? We have the right to express ourselves, they have they right to express themselves, too.”
In a statement, the main body representing Muslims in France, the French Muslim Council, expressed its “deep concern” over the cartoons and warned that their publication risked “exacerbating tensions and provoking reactions.” The council urged French Muslims to express their grievances “via legal means.”
Charbonnier said the weekly published the cartoons in defense of freedom of the press, adding that the images “would shock only those who wanted to be shocked.”
Gerard Biard, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, said: “We’re a newspaper that respects French law. Now, if there’s a law that is different in Kabul or Riyadh, we’re not going to bother ourselves with respecting it.”
The violence provoked by Innocence of Muslims began Sept. 11 when a mob attacked the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. The unrest quickly spread to Libya, where an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi claimed the lives of the U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three staff members.
U.S. and Libyan officials differ publicly on whether the attack on the U.S. compound in Libya’s second largest city was preplanned by radical Islamists, but Matthew Olsen, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said Wednesday that the attack was
Front Section, Pages 6 on 09/20/2012