French presidential race overshadows cartoons case
Source: Reuters
(Adds opinion of state prosecutor) By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor PARIS, Feb 8 (Reuters) - French centrist presidential candidate Francois Bayrou defended a satirical weekly on Thursday for reprinting Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a court case increasingly overshadowed by election politics. Bayrou joined a dozen other politicians and intellectuals backing France's strict separation of church and state, among them conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy who sent the court a letter of support for weekly Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday. The political slant to the case has angered France's Muslim leaders and eclipsed a debate about whether religions can be criticised. The state prosecutor's office said the cartoons came under the category of freedom of speech and recommended the case be dismissed. "What is being showed up in the caricatures is not the supposed obscurantism of the Muslim religion ... it is a denunciation of the use made of it by terrorists," deputy prosecutor Anne de Fontette said. Muslim groups have sued Charlie Hebdo and say a cartoon showing a bomb in the Prophet's turban slandered all Muslims as terrorists. "I'm a believer and I respect religion," Bayrou, who has support among fellow Catholics, told the court. "But free speech is the central pillar of our society." The daily Le Monde said Sarkozy, whose efforts to better integrate Islam in France have aroused voter suspicion, had deftly used the case to adjust his image. His letter was read out dramatically by a lawyer for Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday. "(He) has aligned his campaign with the defence of the separation of church and state and responded to critics accusing him of promoting minorities," the newspaper wrote on Thursday. Plaintiffs in the case -- the Paris Grand Mosque, World Muslim League and Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF) -- condemned what they said was a distraction from a debate on whether the cartoons amounted to a racist slur against Muslims. "The French Muslim Council deplores the politicisation of a judicial case (concerning) an act of provocation that mixes up terrorism and Islam," council chairman Dalil Boubakeur said on Wednesday evening after an emergency council meeting. The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in 2005 and led to violent protests in Muslim countries last year that took 50 lives. Several European publications reprinted them to defy Muslim calls to ban any images of their Prophet. NO MORE APOSTLE OF MINORITIES Sarkozy, France's interior minister, was hailed as a friend of the five-million-strong Muslim community in 2003 when he convinced squabbling leaders to form the French Muslim Council. At that time, he also urged the French to ease their strict separation of church and state to help Muslims build mosques. He originally opposed banning headscarves in state schools, against the majority view to stand firm against Muslim demands. But his relations with Muslims have since soured. In a televised debate with voters on Monday, Sarkozy said immigrants had to respect the rules in France. "That means no polygamy, no female excision and no slitting sheep's throats in the apartment," he remarked to a woman of Algerian origin. Sarkozy "has fully grasped the political dimension of the case," Liberation wrote. "He is trying to use it to shed his image as the apostle of the minorities, which worries his aides because it risks hurting him at the polls."
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