VATICAN CITY/CAIRO — The Vatican and Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's highest authority, Wednesday condemned a French weekly's decision to publish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as “fuel on the fire”. “The debatable initiative by the French magazine threatens... to add more fuel to the fire after the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi,” Vatican's official daily Osservatore Romano said. “There is a risk of a new front in the protests,” it said. Condemning the caricatures, Al-Azhar said that they were “offensive to Islam and its Prophet (pbuh), the prophet of humanity.” Al-Azhar expressed “its and all Muslims' utmost rejection of the insistence of a French publication in printing caricatures,” Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayyeb said in a statement. He said that such acts “that fuel hatred in the name of freedom are completely rejected... Freedom should stop (where it affects) other people's freedoms,” in a statement carried by the MENA news agency. Earlier this week, Tayyeb had called for an international ban on all forms of attacks against Islam. He underlined “the need for an international resolution (banning) any attack on Muslim religious symbols,” in a statement addressed to UN chief Ban Ki-moon. The resolution should “criminalize attacks on Islamic symbols and on those of other religions, after the violence against those who provoked challenges to world peace and international security,” said Tayyeb. — Agencies
