French presidential race overshadows cartoons case
08 Feb 2007 16:28:15 GMT Source: Reuters
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor PARIS, Feb 8 (Reuters) - French centrist presidential candidate Francois Bayrou defended a satirical weekly in court on Thursday for reprinting Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, as election politics overshadowed the case. Bayrou joined a dozen other politicians and intellectuals backing France's strict separation of church and state, among them conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy, who on Wednesday sent the court a letter of support for the weekly Charlie Hebdo. The political slant to the case has angered France's Muslim leaders and eclipsed a debate about whether religions can be criticised. Muslim groups have sued Charlie Hebdo, saying 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 on the second day of the hearing. "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 politisation 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. He urged politicians to "leave the case in its proper context" instead of using it in the campaign for the presidential vote due in April and May. 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 and his support for a more multicultural society began to look like a vote-loser after Britain began rethinking that option following bombings of the London transport system in 2005. 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 sheeps' throats in the apartment," he remarked to a woman of Algerian origin. "He repeated all the usual prejudices," Fouad Alouai of the UOIF told the daily Liberation. "Muslim voters don't count for much in his campaign." 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."
