Iranians protest in front of France’s embassy in the capital, Tehran, to vent their spleen at a French weekly satirical magazine for its recent reprinting of blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
The rally was held on Sept. 9 in condemnation of the decision by Charlie Hebdo to recirculate cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.
The demonstrators from all walks of life, including university students, held placards in condemnation of the Islamophobic move.
They also criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to condemn the blasphemous cartoons in the name of freedom of expression, arguing the move cannot be justified by any means under the pretext of freedom of speech.
The rallies also issued a statement, which condemned the heinous move, and said it violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
“The move not only proved the false nature of the threadbare slogans of Western societies regarding freedom of expression, but it also explicitly revealed the complicity of the Zionist lobby in France in carrying out a plan aimed at diverting Muslims’ attention away from behind-the-scene realities of crimes happening in West Asia,” read part of the statement.
IRGC slams reprinting of offensive cartoons as “Zionist-American scheme.”
In a statement, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) also condemned the reprinting of insulting cartoons in the strongest terms and said the move was a “Zionist-American scheme meant to deflect the global public opinion from ongoing plots in the West Asia region.”
“The failure of the hostile policies of the global hegemony and Zionism against the Islamic Ummah and the truncation of their chain of scenarios in [promoting] Islamophobia prompted rulers of the terrorist regime of the US and the fake Zionist regime to unveil new and already doomed plots to deflect the world public opinion, in particular the Islamic Ummah, from what is going on in the strategic region of West Asia,” read part of the IRGC statement.
It added that the blasphemous move was the latest in a series of freshly devised plots by the enemies of Muslim nations, which came in the wake of certain Arab countries’ normalization of ties with the Israeli regime, apparently referring to a recent U.S.-brokered agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that will lead to a full normalization of diplomatic relations.
The IRGC statement also rebuked the West’s double standards, saying the reprinting of the offensive cartoons was justified under the banner of freedom of expression while questioning Holocaust was an unforgivable crime subject to punishment, saying it proved the West’s false claim of advocating freedom of expression and human rights.
The French weekly reprinted the blasphemous caricatures on the eve of the trial of suspects in a deadly gun rampage on its office in early 2015.
In January 2015, two men barged into the newspaper’s Paris offices, killing 12 people, many of whom worked for the publication.
The terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo were French-born brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who claimed the attacks in the name of al-Qaeda. They were killed in police raids at the time.
The blasphemous cartoons have drawn strong criticism from Muslim countries who call it an Islamophobic act. (PressTV.com)
