Tens of thousands of Muslims yesterday marched in the streets of Bangladesh’s capital in the country’s largest protest yet against French President Emmanuel Macron’s support of secular laws that allow caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
The protesters, organized by the Hefazat-e-Islam group, a network of teachers and students at thousands of Islamic schools, gathered outside the main Baitul Mokarram Mosque in downtown Dhaka.
They chanted “Down with France” and “Boycott French Products” and burned effigies of Macron.
Photo: AFP
“I ask the French government to apologize to the 2 billion Muslims in the world. I also ask the world’s Muslims to demonstrate their faith by boycotting French products and terminating diplomatic relations with France,” Nur-Husain-Kashemi, a leader of the group, told the protesters.
“I ask the government to shut down the French embassy. It’s a shame that they haven’t passed a resolution of condemnation in parliament,” he said.
Hefazat-e-Islam leader Junayed Babunagari said his group was giving the government 24 hours to break ties with France.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“If our demands are not met, we will announce our next course of action,” he shouted to the protesters.
Yesterday’s protest was the largest in a series of anti-France demonstrations in Bangladesh since last week that have called for the closure of the embassy and for Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to condemn France.
Hasina has yet to officially comment, but muslim-majority countries across the world have been outraged by Macron’s refusal to condemn the publication or display of caricatures of Mohammed.
The issue re-emerged following the gruesome beheading near Paris on Oct. 16 of a French history teacher who showed caricatures of the prophet in class.
Meanwhile, thousands of Indonesian Muslims marched to the heavily guarded French embassy in Jakarta to protest against Macron and his staunch support of secular laws that deem caricatures of the prophet to be protected speech.
Waving white flags bearing the Islamic declaration of faith, more than 2,000 demonstrators, many wearing white robes, filled a major thoroughfare in downtown Jakarta.
Authorities blocked streets leading to the embassy, where more than 1,000 police and soldiers were deployed in and around the building barricaded with razor wire.
The protesters chanted “God is Great” and “Boycott French products” as they marched.
Smaller protests also occurred in other Indonesian cities, including in Surabaya, Makassar, Medan and Bandung.
Protest organizer Slamet Ma’arif told the crowd, including members of the Islamic Defenders Front vigilante group, that Macron was being aggressively hostile to Islam and called for a boycott on French products.
“It hurt us deeply and we demanded him to retract his words and apologizes to the Muslim communities all over the world,” he said.
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