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Huge anti-France rally in Bangladesh as Macron backlash widens

Activists and supporters of the Islami Andolon Bangladesh, a Islamist political party, hold a protest march calling for the boycott of French products and denouncing French president Emmanuel Macron for his comments over Prophet Mohammed caricatures, in Dhaka on October 27, 2020. (Photo by MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

By: Pramod Kumar

Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the Bangladesh capital on Tuesday(27) in the biggest anti-France rally since president Emmanuel Macron defended cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Muslims across the world have reacted furiously to Macron’s robust defence of the right to mock religion following the murder of a French schoolteacher who had shown his pupils cartoons of the prophet.

In Syria people burned pictures of France’s leader, tricolour flags were torched in the Libyan capital Tripoli, while French goods have been pulled from supermarket shelves in Qatar, Kuwait and other Gulf states.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even compared the treatment of Muslims in Europe to that of Jews before World War II, joining calls for a boycott of French goods which Paris said had had minimal impact so far.

In Dhaka, protesters set alight an effigy of Macron during Tuesday’s march, in which police said 40,000 people took part.

Hundreds of armed officers used a barbed-wire barricade to stop the demonstrators, who dispersed without violence before they could get close to the French embassy.

The rally was called by Islami Andolon Bangladesh (IAB), one of the country’s largest Islamist parties, and started at the biggest mosque in the nation. Bangladesh is around 90-percent Muslim.

“Boycott French products”, demonstrators chanted.

Ataur Rahman, a senior Islami Andolon member, told the rally at the Baitul Mukarram national mosque: “Macron is one of the few leaders who worship Satan.”

Rahman called on the Bangladesh government to “kick out” the French ambassador, while another protest leader, Hasan Jamal, said activists would “tear down every brick of that building” if the envoy was not ordered out.

“France is the enemy of Muslims,” said Nesar Uddin, a young leader of the group. “Those who represent them are also our enemies.”

Beheading shock

The October 16 beheading of high-school teacher Samuel Paty by a Chechen extremist caused deep shock in France.

Paty had shown his students some of the Mohammed cartoons, over which 12 people were massacred at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015.

Depictions of the Prophet Mohammed are seen as offensive by many Muslims, but in France such cartoons have become identified with a proud secular tradition dating back to the Revolution and the issue of freedom of expression.

In the aftermath of Paty’s murder, Macron issued a passionate defence of free speech and France’s secular way of life, vowing that the country “will not give up cartoons”.

France has been targeted in a string of jihadist attacks that have killed over 250 people since 2015 and led to deep soul-searching over the impact of Islam on the country’s core values.

Some of the attackers have cited the Mohammed cartoons as well as France’s ban on wearing the Islamic face veil in public as among their motives.

Several suspected Islamist radicals have been arrested in dozens of raids since Paty’s murder.

Some 50 organisations with alleged links to radical Islam, as well as a mosque outside Paris, have also been earmarked for closure by the government.

Earlier this month, Macron unveiled a plan to defend France’s secular values against a trend of “Islamist separatism”, and described Islam as a religion “in crisis”.

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