placard with a cartoon drawing of the French president with a snake
tongue during a protest against his comments on the latest cartoons
of the Prophet Mohammed outside the French embassy in Tehran on
October 28, 2020. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)
The head of a UN anti-extremism body
expressed “deep concern” Wednesday about growing tensions over
satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, urging “mutual respect”
between people of different faiths and political
views.
The statement by Miguel Angel Moratinos — who heads the United
Nations Alliance of Civilizations — follows growing anger in the
Muslim world over France’s response to the beheading of a teacher
who had shown his pupils the images as part of a class on free
speech.
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President Emmanuel Macron has vigorously defended the
publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed on free
speech grounds, sparking angry protests across swathes of the
Muslim world and campaigns to boycott French products.
The UN High Representative “is following with deep concern the
growing tensions and instances of intolerance triggered by the
publication of the satirical caricatures depicting Prophet
Mohammed,” according to the statement.
“The inflammatory caricatures have also provoked acts of
violence against innocent civilians who were attacked for their
sheer religion, belief or ethnicity,” Moratinos said in the
statement, without explicitly referring to Macron’s defense of the
images.
“Insulting religions and sacred religious symbols provoke hatred
and violent extremism leading to polarization and fragmentation of
the society,” he warned.