Charlie Hebdo protests grow across Pakistan

A supporter from the “Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat” Muslim organisation stands on a French national flag as others shout slogans during a protest against the reprinting of satirical sketches of the Prophet Mohammad by French magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir on September 3, 2020. Pakistan’s foreign office condemned the decision by French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo to reprint cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Fourteen suspected accomplices of the jihadist gunmen who attacked the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket appeared in a Paris court on September 2, five years after the three days of terror that rocked France. Photo by Sajjad QAYYUM / AFP

ISLAMABAD — Thousands of Islamist protesters rallied in anti-France demonstrations across Pakistan on Friday as anger swelled over a French magazine’s decision to republish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Earlier this week satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo — the target of a massacre by Islamist gunmen in 2015 — reprinted the controversial images to mark the beginning of the trial of the alleged accomplices in the attack.

The publication’s move sparked condemnation from Pakistan’s foreign ministry along with calls from Islamists to hold protests following Friday prayers, spurring thousands to mass in cities where they called for boycotts and the French ambassador’s expulsion.

“We need to send a strong message to the French that this disrespect to our beloved prophet will not be tolerated,” protester Muhammad Ansari said during a demonstration in the eastern city of Lahore.

Images of the Prophet are proscribed in Islam. Insulting religion under Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws can carry the death penalty.

In the past, politicians have been assassinated, European countries threatened with nuclear annihilation and students lynched over blasphemy allegations.

Friday’s demonstrations were largely led by the hardline Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, which has organized huge and often violent protests over alleged blasphemy in the past.

The group paralyzed much of Pakistan in 2018 with riots after a Christian woman accused of blasphemy was acquitted by the country’s supreme court.

Twelve people, including some of France’s most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

On Friday, the paper said its Wednesday edition sold out the first day, prompting it to print 200,000 more copies that will hit newsstands in the coming days.