Sardar Yousuf (right), the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs from the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) political party, and other parliamentarians and workers rally to protest against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo for printing of satirical sketches of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamabad yesterday.

AFP/Islamabad

Pakistan’s parliament yesterday condemned French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for printing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, describing it as “blasphemous” and criticising Western media for reprinting the caricature.
The parliamentary resolution comes a week after the government officially condemned the murder of 12 people at the offices of the satirical weekly on January 7 in Paris as a “brutal terror attack”.
The magazine this week published a “survivors” issue featuring an image of the Prophet Muhammad, which sold out on Wednesday before more copies of an eventual print run of 5mn hit newsstands in France.
“This house strongly condemns (the) printing and reprinting of the blasphemous caricatures... and also takes serious note of the continued trend of their reproduction in numerous other newspapers and magazines of other Western capitals,” the resolution said.
“This house genuinely believes that freedom of expression should not be misused as a means to attack or hurt public sentiments and religious beliefs,” it added.
“We urge the international community, including the European Union, to make sure such things are not repeated,” the resolution said.
All parties supported the resolution.  
Insulting the Prophet carries the death penalty under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
Rights groups say the laws are mainly used to persecute minorities and wage personal vendettas.
Mobs often take matters into their own hands and lynch those accused of blasphemy, and such killers are widely feted.
After passing the resolution lawmakers and parliament employees marched on Constitution Avenue raising placards bearing slogans including “Allahu Akbar” and “We are ready to serve of Prophet Muhammad”.
Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Sardar Yousuf of the ruling PML-N party told reporters outside parliament that all Pakistanis condemned the cartoon and saw it as “a conspiracy against Islam hatched through Western media”.
“Why do people in the West do this when they know the punishment for this is death in our Shariah [law]?” Railways Minister Saad Rafiq said at the rally.
At least 12 people, including some of the magazine’s cartoonists, were killed when two Muslim gunmen stormed the publication’s Paris office.
Several Islamic groups in Pakistan have announced protest marches against the publication, scheduled for today.
The activists of Sunni Tehreek, a group that controls an estimated 100,000 mosques across the country, plans to rally in all major cities after Friday prayers.
“We will tell the world that the caricatures have hurt the sentiments of over a billion Muslims,” Sarwat Ijaz Qardi, the group’s chief, said in a statement.
The Jamaat-e-Islami political party, which is part of a coalition government in the north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, would also participate in the rallies, its chief Sirajul Haq said.
A cleric in Peshawar city this week held funeral prayers for the gunmen responsible for the attack on Charlie Hebdo, but only a couple of dozen people participated.