Protests over anti-Islam film and Muhammad cartoons - live updates

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Security forces in Muslim countries are preparing for new protests over an Islamophobic film and cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The largest protests are expected in Pakistan, which is usually way outside the remit of this blog, but we thought this would be the best place to cover the story as it unfolds.

Here’s a summary of the main developments:

Tension over anti-Islam film and French cartoons

Egypt

• France and Germany are closing diplomatic missions in Egypt as a precaution despite no calls for protests by the country’s most prominent Islamic groups over either the film or the cartoons, Ahram Online reports.

Two of Egypt’s prominent Salafist groups – the Salafist Front and Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya – have declared that they would not take part in any demonstrations at the French embassy.

Egypt’s main Islamist parties, the Salafist Nour party and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, for their part, have not issued any calls for embassy protests.

Iran

• Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has lashed out at the west over the film and the cartoon, describing them as the “ugliest insults to the divine messenger”. Speaking at a military parade in Tehran, he said western respect for free speech was deception, AP reports.

Libya and the United States

• For the first time the White House has declared last week’s deadly assault on US consulate in Benghazi as a "terrorist attack”, the LA Times reports. Jay Carney, Barack Obama’s press secretary, said: "It is self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently and the result was four deaths of American officials.”

Pakistan

• Pakistan has declared a national holiday urging people to demonstrate peacefully on a “Day of love for the Prophet”, as the US sought to calm anger over the anti-Islamic film, the BBC reports. Washington has paid for adverts on Pakistani TV showing President Barack Obama condemning the film.

• Pakistan’s Daily Times blames western champions of free speech for provoking extremists. 

What the proponents of unbridled freedom of expression in the west either do not realise or do not give a fig about is the dialectical relationship between freedom and responsibility. In their clinging to notions of freedom of expression (without any responsibility as to the consequences), what these modern day fundamentalists of western values fail to see is how their adventurism is bringing grist to the mill of the extremists throughout the Muslim world, and in the process dooming the liberal, democratic and progressive community in these societies to hell.

Syria

• An air strike on a petrol station in northern Syria has killed more than 50 people, activists have claimed. The attack took place in Raqqa province, around 100 miles (160km) east of war-torn Aleppo. A video posted online, which purportedly showed the aftermath, revealed a scene of devastation as locals and emergency workers scrambled amid fire and wreckage. A rebel commander claimed 70 burned bodies were found at the scene. The activist group, the Local Co-ordination Committees in Syria, put the death toll at 71 people, who were among 250 people killed on Thursday across the country. 

• President Bashar al-Assad has claimed he is open to dialogue with the opposition but has vowed to continue to crush armed resistance to his rule. Citing an interview with the Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram Al-Araby, Reuters quotes Assad saying: 

I welcome dialogue with the national opposition but those who choose arms have put themselves in confrontation with the Syrian Arab army … Both sides of the equation are equal and political dialogue is the only solution. Violence, however, is not allowed … and the state will not stand with its hands tied in the face of those who bear arms against it. 

Bringing down the governments of the Arab world has not worked in the interest of freedom, democracy or ending social injustice as much as it helped create chaos.

• The US has demanded that Iraq take action to stop Iran supplying arms to Syria over Iraqi airspace. US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: “They [Iraq] either need to deny over-flight requests for Iranian aircraft going to Syria or to require that such flights land in Iraqi territory for inspection.” At the UN’s security council the US and the UK expressed serious concern at Iran’s arms exports to Syria.

Source:
http://www.ezonearticle.com/2012/09/21/protests-over-anti-islam-film-and-muhammad-cartoons-live-updates/