French Muslims sue magazine over cartoons

Paris, Feb 7: A French court case shining light on the grey area where free speech and religious sensitivities overlap opens today when Muslim groups sue a satirical magazine that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

The Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of French Islamic Organisations accuse Charlie Hebdo of inciting racial hatred by reprinting the Danish caricatures that sparked violence in the Muslim world last year.

Politicians, intellectuals, secular Muslims and left-wing pressure groups have lined up behind Charlie Hebdo, arguing that Muslim groups have no right to call for limits on free speech.

''I just cannot imagine the consequences not only for France but for Denmark and Europe if they lose the case,'' Fleming Rose, the Danish editor who first published the cartoons, told a news conference with Charlie Hebdo publisher Philippe Val.

''It would turn back the clock decades, ages.'' However, an opinion poll on Tuesday showed 79 percent thought it unacceptable to ridicule a religion publicly and 78 per cent ruled out parodies of Jesus Christ, Mohammad or Buddha.

''Are the French rediscovering the sacred?'' asked the Catholic weekly Pelerin which published the poll. ''Are they renouncing the critical spirit that has inspired a French tradition since Voltaire and the Enlightenment?'' The Paris court will hear the case today and tomorrow, and issue its ruling at a later date.

The cartoons, originally published in 2005 in the Danish daily Jyllens-Posten, provoked protests in the Muslim world that left 50 people dead. Several European publications reprinted them as an affirmation of the right to free speech.

Solidarity

In an act of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, French newspaper Liberation printed the contested cartoons once more today: ''It is not words which wound, or pictures that kill. It is bombs,'' the daily said, calling the trial ''idiotic''.

A televised debate between Charlie Hebdo publisher Val and Paris Grand Mosque rector Dalil Boubakeur broke down in acrimony yesterday after they squabbled over the limits of free speech.

''If we can't criticise religion anymore, there will be no women's rights, no birth control and no gay rights,'' Val said in the raucous TV debate.

Boubakeur said the controversial cartoon showing Mohammad with a bomb in his turban was not simply satire, but an insult against all Muslims by suggesting they were all terrorists.

''We don't want censorship, we don't want the sacred to be protected by blasphemy laws or medieval jurisdiction,'' he said.

Boubakeur said last week he wanted to show that reprinting the cartoons was a provocation equal to acts of anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial, which are both banned under French law.

Courts in France, which observes a strict separation of church and state in the public sphere, have repeatedly defended free speech rights against religious objections.

The Catholic Church failed in recent years to win court injunctions against a film poster with a cross formed like a swastika and a fashion ad with scantily clad women posing like Jesus and his Apostles in Da Vinci's painting The Last Supper.

Reuters