GagWatch

The Independent reports that French Muslim leaders are kicking up a stink after the France-Soir newspaper yesterday asserted that no religious dogma should be imposed on a democratic and secular society by reprinting the cartoons at the centre of the Jylands-Posten controversy.

Jean-Baptiste Mattei, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, distanced the government from the printing of the cartoons but defended France-Soir’s right to publish them.

The decision to print the drawings was “the newspaper’s responsibility alone”. France upheld the principle of press freedom but M. Mattei said this should be “exercised in a spirit of tolerance and respect for religious beliefs”.

The BBC, however, reports that the owner of France Soir, Raymond Lakah, disagrees and has reponded to editor, Jacques Lefranc’s support of freedom of speech… by sacking him.

Journalists at the paper are standing by their editor and have printed a front page picture and editorial in which they strongly defended the right to free speech.

Religious freedom gives people the right to practise their faith or not, the editorial says, but should not become a means to impose the rules of a single religion on society as a whole.

French MP Herve Mariton condemned the sacking as “in total contradiction of the tradition of press freedom”.

Speaking to the BBC, he said Mr Lefranc had, by printing the cartoons, at least given people the chance to see what the debate was about.

In other news, Norway has closed its West Bank mission to the public in response to threats from two militant groups against Danes, French and Norwegians in the Palestinian territories.

In a seperate report, the BBC also notes that gunmen from Islamic Jihad and the Yasser Arafat Brigades briefly surrounded the EU’s offices in Gaza. After firing into the air and trying to climb the compound’s walls for 45 minutes, they left. There were no injuries.

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