Thousands of people swarmed the streets of Pakistan on Friday to protest against French magazine Charlie's Hebdo's decision to reprint cartoons mocking he Prophet Mohammad.
The protests were organised by the hardline Islamist Tehreek-e-Laibak Pakistan (TLP) party. There were rallies in Karachi, the country`s largest city, as well as in Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Lahore and Dera Ismail Khan.
Reuters reported that the protests paralysed traffic.
Protestors were heard chanting "Death to France" and called for boycotting French products."Decapitation is the punishment of blasphemers," read one of the placards at the protest.
“It (re-printing of cartoons) amounts to big terrorism; they repeat such acts of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammad every few years. It should be stopped,” said Razi Hussani, TLP district leader in Karachi.
The Pakistan government too condemned the republishing of the caricatures. Pakistan Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that even though the country believes in freedom of expression, but such liberty does not mean a license to offend religious sentiment.
It is to be noted that last week the satirical weekly magazine reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, whose staff was killed in a terrorist attack by Islamic extremists in 2015.
They were reprinted last Tuesday on the eve of the first trial for the January 2015 attacks against Charlie Hebdo.
The caricatures republished were were first printed in the fall of 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, setting off sometimes violent protests in early 2006 by Muslims who believe depicting Muhammad is blasphemy.
Charlie Hebdo is known for its irreverent take on matters ranging from race to religion.
On Jan. 7, 2015, brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a killing spree at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris. They open fired on the reporters and illustrators at the satirical weekly office.
Among the dead were, the editor Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb, four other cartoonists including Cabu, two columnists, a copy editor, a guest attending the meeting, and the caretaker.
The far-right Islamists were reportedly angry over portrayals of the Prophet Mohammed for which the editorial team has been receiving many death threats, and in 2011 their office was petrol bombed.
