+

MUSLIMS ACROSS ASIA STAGE ANTI-FRANCE PROTEST AS NICE MOURNS CHURCH ATTACK

France’s Interior Minister on Friday warned of more terrorist attacks, saying the country was engaged in a war against Islamist ideology, following the second deadly knife attack in its cities in two weeks. “We are in a war against an enemy that is both inside and outside,” Damarnin said, even as mourners placed flowers, messages […]

France’s Interior Minister on Friday warned of more terrorist attacks, saying the country was engaged in a war against Islamist ideology, following the second deadly knife attack in its cities in two weeks.

“We are in a war against an enemy that is both inside and outside,” Damarnin said, even as mourners placed flowers, messages and candles near the Notre Dame Basilica, the site of Thursday’s attack. We need to understand that there have been and there will be other events such as these terrible attacks,” he said.

President Emmanuel Macron has deployed thousands of soldiers to protect important sites such as places of worship and schools, and France’s security alert is at its highest level.

Foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Friday that France’s highest attack risk warning had been sent to citizens abroad on Thursday evening “wherever they are, because the risk is everywhere”. This came after a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant, Brahim al-Aouissaoui, decapitated a woman and killed two other people in Notre Dame Basilica in Nice on Thursday.

The attack took place at a time of swelling anger among many Muslims across the world over the issue of French cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which they deem insulting and blasphemous. It occurred about two weeks after Samuel Paty, a school teacher in a Paris suburb, was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen who was apparently incensed by the teacher showing such cartoons in a civics class.

France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, has defended the right to publish such cartoons. Macron has reiterated that France would not compromise on its basic freedoms of belief and expression.

Meanwhile, lakhs of Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Palestinian territories staged anti-French protests after Friday prayers. In Pakistan, police briefly fired tear gas at protesters who broke through security blockades in Islamabad in a failed attempt to demonstrate at the French Embassy against the printing in France of images depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

In Bangladesh, marchers in the capital Dhaka chanted “Boycott French products” and carried banners calling Macron “the world’s biggest terrorist”. Some burned effigies of Macron.

French embassies across the world have been told to step up security.

Even as Muslims were protesting against France, people in Nice the victims of the Thursday attack. People gathered in front of the Notre Dame church to lay flowers and light candles. “I’m from Nice and this is a tragedy once again,” news agency Reuters quoted Frederic Lefevre, 50, who wore a French national rugby shirt, as saying. “We’re a free country. Let’s love freedom—that’s a message to the world. No god should kill,” he said.

WITH AGENCY INPUTS

Tags:

Featured