Iran’s Khamenei Says Mohammed Cartoons ‘Unforgivable’

A handout picture released by the official website of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him during a meeting with school and university students in the capital Tehran on November 3, 2019. Iran’s supreme leader again ruled out negotiations with Washington, a day before the 40th anniversary of the hostage crisis at the former US embassy in Tehran.
IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER’S WEBSITE / AFP

 

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tuesday that cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that were republished by a French satirical magazine last week were “unforgivable”.

“The grave and unforgivable sin committed by a French weekly in insulting the luminous and holy personality of (the) Prophet revealed, once more, the hostility and malicious grudge harboured by political and cultural organisations in the West against Islam and the Muslim community,” Khamenei said in an English-language statement.

“The excuse of ‘freedom of expression’ made by some French politicians in order not to condemn this grave crime of insulting the Holy Prophet of Islam is completely unacceptable, wrong, and demagogic.”

During a visit to Beirut last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said Charlie Hebdo had broken no law in republishing the cartoons to mark the September 2 opening of the trial into a deadly 2015 attack on its offices by Islamist extremists.

“There is… in France a freedom to blaspheme that is linked to freedom of conscience,” Macron said.

“It is my job to protect all these freedoms.”

Twelve people, including some of France’s most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the magazine’s Paris offices.

The perpetrators were killed in the aftermath of the massacre but 14 alleged accomplices in the attacks, which also targeted a Jewish supermarket, went on trial.

Despite its outrage at the cartoons, Iran condemned the attack on the paper’s offices.

 

Supporters of hardline Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan carry placards and shout slogans during a protest against the reprinting cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad by French magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Rawalpindi on September 4, 2020. – Satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of a massacre by Islamist gunmen in 2015, reprinted the controversial caricatures this week to mark the start of the trial of the alleged accomplices in the attack. (Photo by Aamir QURESHI / AFP)

 

-AFP