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“We have indeed decided as a precautionary measure to close our premises, embassies, consulates, cultural centres and schools,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said of the shut-down tomorrow.
Yesterday, France stepped up security and appealed for calm after satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo published the cartoons.
Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, said he had ordered special security measures “in all the countries where this could pose a problem”. Demonstrations in the Islamic world often follow Friday prayers.
Fabius admitted that he was “concerned” by the potential for a backlash to Charlie Hebdo’s printing of the series of cartoons, given the background of violent protests that have taken place in the Muslim world over the release of the anti-Islam video, Innocence of Muslims.
Police were deployed outside the Paris offices of the magazine yesterday. The left-wing, libertarian publications offices were firebombed last year after it published an edition “guest-edited” by the Prophet Muhammad that it called Sharia Hebdo.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault urged “responsibility” and said anyone offended by the caricatures could sue.
Leaders of the large Muslim community in France said an appeal for calm would be read out in mosques across the country on tomorrow but it also condemned the magazine for publishing “insulting” images.
The weekly carries a total of four cartoons which include images definitely intended to represent the Prophet, as opposed to any other Muslim. In two of them, the Prophet is shown naked.
The cover of the magazine shows a Muslim in a wheelchair being pushed by an Orthodox Jew under the title Intouchables 2, referring to an award-winning French film about a poor black man who helps an aristocratic quadriplegic.
But the explict, arguably vulgar, nature of the drawings made it inevitable they would cause offence.
Charlie Hebdo editor said that its website has crashed after it was hacked.
Ayrault said anyone offended by cartoons could take the matter to the courts but made it clear there would be no action against the weekly.
“We are in a country where freedom of expression is guaranteed, including the freedom to caricature,” he said.
“If people really feel offended in their beliefs and think there has been an infringement of the law — and we are in a state where laws must be totally respected — they can go to court,” Ayrault said.
He also said a request to hold a demonstration in Paris would be refused.
France’s interior ministry has already banned all protests over the controversial video following a violent demonstration last weekend near the US embassy. — Al Jazeera.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter