Pakistani protesters riot
Reuters is reporting that demonstrators clashed with police in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday as anger over insults to the Prophet Mohammad boiled over despite calls from [some few] political and religious leaders across the Muslim world for peaceful protest.
Western diplomatic missions throughout the Muslim world tightened security, with some closing down on expectation of big protests after Friday prayers.
An anti-Islam film made in America has enraged Muslims and led to days of protests across the Muslim world while cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad published in a French magazine on Wednesday were expected to compound the anger.
Egypt's highest Islamic legal official said on Thursday Muslims should follow his example of enduring insults without retaliating. But the call looked unlikely to calm the outrage.
"An attack upon the Holy Prophet is an attack on the whole 1.5 billion Muslims. Therefore, this is something unacceptable," Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said in a speech to politicians, religious leaders and others.
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President Obama to date has both lied about terror attacks under cover of protests and failed to address what appears to be a coordinated and planned worldwide drive by Muslims to destabilize western civilization.
In a related story, French embassies, consulates, cultural centers and schools in around 20 Muslim countries shut up shop on Friday – the Muslim holy day – for fear of retaliatory violence following weekly prayers. The order came from the foreign ministry, which anticipates violent demonstrations over the publishing Wednesday of Prophet Mohammed cartoons by satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo. The obscene cartoons exacerbated anger among Muslim communities after more than a week of deadly protests sparked by the US-made amateurish video “Innocence of Muslims”.
Security had been beefed up on security arrangements at institutions abroad and in France, with reinforcements and armed guards on standby. The French Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning urging French citizens in the Muslim world to exercise “the greatest vigilance”, avoiding public gatherings and “sensitive buildings”. Tens of thousands of French expatriates live in Muslim countries.
Protests over the cartoons – which showed the Prophet Mohammed naked – had already begun Thursday in Tehran and Kabul. Demonstrators chanted “death to France” outside the French embassies in the two capitals. One student told TV reporters that the “doomed, nasty French” had committed an offence that the activists were willing to “sacrifice” themselves for. “What were they thinking?” he asked.
In Tunisia, French schools were shut down from Wednesday until next Monday after the ruling Islamists branded the cartoons a "new attack" on their religion. One parent outside a school in Tunis told FRANCE 24 that she was reassured by the decision. “It's better not to take any chances, given that we don't really have faith in the security system,” she said. But another thought officials were overreacting. "I don't understand the need to close for several days," he said, adding that one or two key days would be enough.