Posters of French President Emmanuel Macron were seen with a shoe print on his face
Mumbai / New Delhi:
Posters of French President Emmanuel Macron – including defending cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and comments describing Islam as “a religion in crisis” angered several Muslim-majority countries – were spotted stuck to the surface of a road in Muhammad Ali Road in Mumbai on Thursday.
Videos of cars and two-wheelers rolling on the posters and people walking on them have been widely distributed online. Other videos shared show angry members of the Muslim community demonstrating to protest Mr. Macron’s comments – with signs reading “Our Prophet Muhammad, Our Honor” – and a man hitting a poster of the French president with slippers.
The posters sparked a political row in Maharashtra, with the BJP attacking the Shiv Sena for “supporting Islamist terrorists” and demanding action against those who put up the posters.
“When France denounces Islamic terror, then here (in Maharashtra) the government is supporting the people who support fanatic Islamist terrorists?” BJP chief Kirit Somaiya told ANI news agency.
Although the Mumbai posters were quickly removed by the police, who deployed additional security at these locations. No case, however, has been recorded.
Similar protests have been recorded over the past two days in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, in which a congressman also participated, at Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh and Ludhiana in Punjab. Protests in India also followed an online trend with the hashtag #BoycottFrenchProducts.
These come a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his solidarity with the victims of the knife attack at a church in the French city of Nice.
Prime Minister Modi said: “I strongly condemn the recent terrorist attacks in France, including today’s heinous attack in Nice inside a church” and “India stands alongside the France in the fight against terrorism “.
The knife-wielding attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” and beheaded a woman and killed two others, according to Reuters news agency. The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, called the attack terrorism. Mr Macron, visiting the scene, said: “Very clearly, France is under attack.”
The protests against Mr Macron first erupted after he refused to criticize satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for republishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad – cartoons originally published in 2015 that led to a terrorist attack on the offices of the magazine – citing “freedom of expression”.
The French president also called Islam a “religion in crisis” and, following the public beheading of a teacher in Paris – who had shown drawings to students in his class – said he (the teacher) had been “killed because the Islamists want our future”.
Mr Macron has since been the subject of personal attacks, including those by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was also targeted by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who accused his French counterpart of “attacking Islam”.
India on Wednesday strongly condemned the personal attacks on Mr. Macron, calling them “a violation of the most basic standards of international discourse.” In a very strong statement, the Foreign Ministry also condemned the brutal terrorist attack that killed the teacher.
Muhammad cartoons are prohibited by Islam and such actions are considered blasphemy – an explosive problem in ultra-conservative Muslim countries where anyone deemed to have committed such acts can face the death penalty.
With the contribution of ANI, PTI, Reuters
