Malaysian Muslims burn Bush effigy during cartoons protest
About 3,000 Malaysian Muslims burned an effigy of US President George Bush and called for an international boycott of Danish products today to protest against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
The rally outside the headquarters of the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party in Malaysia’s north-eastern Kelantan state was the biggest so far against the drawings in the mostly-Muslim south-east Asian nation.
“This is an expression of our anger and condemnation of the cartoons,” said Anual Bakri Harn, a spokesman for the Islamic party, which governs Kelantan.
Protesters waved banners urging Muslims to shun Danish goods and burned an effigy of Bush.
“Bush backs Denmark, so we’re criticising him just as we criticise Denmark,” Annual Bakri said.
The Islamic party, which is Malaysia’s largest opposition group, last week drew an estimated 2,000 protesters who marched to Denmark’s embassy in Kuala Lumpur after Friday prayers.
The images – which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, before being reprinted by others, mostly in Europe – have sparked international anger among Muslims, who widely regard any depiction of the prophet as blasphemous.
Earlier this month, Malaysia’s federal government ordered a nationwide ban on possessing or distributing the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and suspended the publication of two newspapers that recently reproduced the cartoons.
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