French Minister's Support Of Muhammad Cartoons Stirs Ire

PARIS — The center-right front-runner for the French presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday earned the ire of Islamic groups when it became known that he backed a satirical magazine's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Lawyers acting for the magazine Charlie Hebdo, which is being sued for defamation by two Islamic groups for reprinting Danish cartoons, read out a letter from Mr. Sarkozy, the interior minister, in which he said he preferred "too many caricatures to an absence of caricature."

"I am eager to lend my support to your newspaper, which belongs to an old French tradition, that of satire," Mr. Sarkozy wrote. "Having very often been the main target" of Charlie Hebdo, Mr. Sarkozy added that he backed it "in the name of the freedom to laugh at anything."

The court erupted into laughter when the lawyer read out Mr. Sarkozy's name, followed by his campaign slogan, "together, everything is possible." But his statement provoked the wrath of the official French Council for the Muslim Religion, CFCM, an Islamic umbrella group that Mr. Sarkozy helped create four years ago.

Furious at what it saw as government interference, a spokesman for the CFCM said last night that the comments were "unacceptable" and that its heads were considering resigning en masse in protest. "It's out of the question for a minister for religious affairs to take such a position. There's no neutrality," Abdallah Zekri said.

The CFCM represents the estimated 5 million Muslims in France.

The case against Charlie Hebdo was brought by two components of the CFCM, the Paris Grand Mosque and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, for "public insults against a group of people because they belong to a religion."

It concerns an issue of Charlie Hebdo published last February, which reprinted the 12 Danish drawings first published by Jyllands-Posten.

The Islamic groups singled out two caricatures, one showing the Prophet Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb, the other showing him telling terrorists, "Stop, we have run out of virgins."

The groups argue that the cartoons blur the lines between Muslims in general and violent fundamentalists and are "deliberately racist."

Later, Mr. Sarkozy, who was in Toulon yesterday, reiterated his support for the magazine.

He said: "I am not in favor of any kind of censorship, whether of men, ideas, or religions."

The trial continues.