Paris police ban anti-Islam film protest in front of Grand Mosque

Paris police have banned a demonstration planned for Saturday in front of the city’s Grand Mosque to protest against a U.S.-made anti-Islam film, a police source said.

An individual had made an official request to police to hold the protest.

France’s interior minister has said he will ban all protests over the film after a violent demonstration last weekend near the U.S. embassy in Paris.

The protest was planned to be against the film “Innocence of Muslims” and not against the anti-Islam cartoons mocking Prophet Mohammed published by the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, on Wednesday.

The satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo featured several caricatures of the Prophet showing him naked in what the publishers said was an attempt to poke fun at the furor over the privately-made U.S. film trailer.

French embassies, consulates, cultural centers and schools in around 20 Muslim countries will be closed on foreign ministry orders on Friday for fear of violence following Muslim weekly prayers.

Protests against film

Meanwhile, students in Iran and Pakistan protested on Thursady against “Innocence of Muslims.”

Up to 100 Iranian students protested outside the French embassy in Tehran on Thursday, a day after a French magazine published cartoons that ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad, Iranian media reported.

The protesters shouted “Death to France, death to America” and held placards urging the French people to demand their government respect sacredness and humanity, Fars news agency said.

A witness said only about 100 people demonstrated, while security forces kept tight control.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last week described as “crazy and hateful” the anti-Islamic film that has sparked sometimes violent protests in several Muslim countries.

And in Pakistan, Police fired live rounds and tear gas Thursday to break up a crowd of around 1,000 students, many armed with wooden clubs, protesting in Islamabad against a US-made anti-Islam film.

The demonstrators were driven back by police as they tried to reach Islamabad’s heavily-guarded diplomatic enclave, which is home to most Western embassies, including the U.S., British and French missions.

For many Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous.

Egypt Islamists slam cartoons

Meanwhile, Egypt’s influential Muslim Brotherhood demanded Thursday that France act against cartoons mocking the Prophet in the same way as against the topless pictures of Prince William’s wife Catherine.

Its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), called for “firm and rapid measures against the (French) magazine” Charlie Hebdo which printed cartoons mocking the prophet on Wednesday.

The movement, from which President Mohammed Mursi emerged, pointed out that “the French judiciary has taken dissuasive measures against a magazine which published the photographs” of the former Kate Middleton, the British royal.

French authorities on Tuesday banned the magazine Closer from any further publication or resale of the pictures and launched a criminal investigation into how they were obtained.

The FJP also stressed “the tough stand (of French authorities) against those who deny the Holocaust” in France.