Radical Islam enemy of France, says PM

Nice/Dhaka, November 7

Advertisement

French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Saturday the government would keep “fighting relentlessly” against radical Islam as he paid tribute to the three victims of a knife attack in the southern city of Nice last month.

In Pakistan and Bangladesh, protests continued against France over republishing of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad.

A Tunisian man shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is the greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in the coastal city on October 29 before being shot and taken away by police.

‘Should Apologise’

I ask the French Government to apologise to the 2 billion Muslims across the world.

—Nur-Husain-Kashemi, Leader, Hefazat-e-Islam

“We know the enemy. Not only has it been identified, but it has a name, it is radical Islam, a political ideology that disfigures the Muslim religion,” Castex said in a speech during the ceremony. “(It is) an enemy that the government is fighting relentlessly by providing the necessary resources and mobilising all of its forces everyday,” he added.

In Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, thousands of Muslims rallied against the French President’s support of secular laws that allow caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

The protesters, organised by the Hefazat-e-Islam group, a network of teachers and students at thousands of Islamic schools, gathered outside the main Baitul Mokarram Mosque in downtown Dhaka. “I ask the French government to apologise to the 2 billion Muslims in the world. I also ask the world’s Muslims to demonstrate their faith by boycotting French products and terminating diplomatic relations with France,” Nur-Husain-Kashemi, a leader of the group, told the protesters.

Protests continued in Pakistan as well. Khadim Rizvi, head of religious and political outfit Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, lead a rally against the French President, Emmanuel Macron. — Agencies