CAIRO (Reuters) – Muslims angered by cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad should follow his example of enduring insults without retaliating, Egypt’s highest Islamic legal official said yesterday.
Western embassies tightened security in Sanaa, fearing the cartoons published in a French magazine on Wednesday could lead to more unrest in the Yemeni capital where crowds attacked the US mission last week over an anti-Islam film made in America.
In the latest of a wave of protests against that video in the Islamic world, several thousand Shi’ite Muslims demonstrated in the northern Nigerian town of Zaria, burning an effigy of US President Barack Obama and crying “Death to America”.
The cartoons in France’s Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly have provoked relatively little street anger so far, although about 100 Iranians demonstrated outside the French embassy in Tehran.
In Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring revolts, the Islamist-led government decreed a ban on protests planned on Friday against the cartoons.
An Islamist activist called for attacks in France to avenge the perceived insult to Islam by the “slaves of the cross”.
Mu’awiyya al-Qahtani said on a website used by Islamist militants and monitored by the US-based SITE intelligence group: “Is there someone who will roll up his sleeves and bring back to us the glory of the hero Mohammed Merah?”
He was referring to an al Qaeda-inspired gunman who killed seven people, including three Jewish children, in the southern French city of Toulouse in March. Condemning the publication of the cartoons in France as an act verging on incitement, Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said it showed how polarized the West and the Muslim world had become.
Gomaa said Mohammad and his companions had endured “the worst insults from the non-believers of his time. Not only was his message routinely rejected, but he was often chased out of town, cursed and physically assaulted on numerous occasions.
“But his example was always to endure all personal insults and attacks without retaliation of any sort. There is no doubt that, since the Prophet is our greatest example in this life, this should also be the reaction of all Muslims.”
