Egypt's Al-Azhar Condemns Charlie Hebdo for Republication of Insulting Cartoons

TEHRAN (IQNA) – Egypt's highest Muslim authority Al-Azhar on Wednesday condemned French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's decision to reprint cartoons of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), as the trial opened over the subsequent 2015 terror attack on its Paris office.

"The insistence on the criminal act to republish these offensive cartoons embeds hate speech further and inflames the emotions of faithful followers of religions," Al-Azhar's Observatory for Combating Extremism said on its Facebook page, AFP reported.

Charlie Hebdo marked the start of Wednesday's trial by republishing the controversial cartoons that had angered Muslims globally.

Al-Azhar, considered the foremost religious institution for Sunni Muslims, said the contentious decision to reprint the caricatures was "an unjustified provocation of the emotions of nearly two billion Muslims around the world".

Egypt's Al-Azhar, the bastion of a moderate version of Sunni Islam, also condemned the terror attack on Charlie Hebdo's premises in its Wednesday statement, noting "Islam abhors any act of violence".