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Eight dead, 90 injured in Unabated Anti-Falwell Demos in India
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| Muslims protest Falwell’s insulting of Prophet Muhammad |
BOMBAY,
October 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The death toll in
demonstrations in the western Indian city of Solapur protesting
comments by U.S. Baptist minister Jerry Falwell against the Prophet
Mohammed (peace be upon him), on Saturday October 12, upped to eight
people, with more than 90 wounded.
Five
people died and 50 were injured Friday, October 11, during a protest
over remarks by Falwell, which also drew criticism from world and
Islamic countries.
"Sectarian
clashes have been reported throughout the night in which three more
deaths have been reported as well as several injured," the Agence
France-Press (AFP) quoted a Solapur police officer as saying.
The
official said of the five killed Friday, four died in police firing
and one in mob violence.
"The
situation at the moment remains tense and curfew has been extended
'til noon today. Additional paramilitary forces have been called as a
security measure," the spokesman added.
"Various
Muslim bodies in the city had called for a strike to protest these
remarks," said a police spokesman Friday.
A
similar strike called by Muslim bodies in India's financial capital,
Bombay, however, ended peacefully on Friday.
Falwell,
a leader of the U.S. evangelical Christian right, in a television
interview broadcast Sunday, October 6 on the CBS network's "60
Minutes" news program equated Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon
him) with a "terrorist".
British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Wednesday October 8, branded Falwell's
comment as "outrageous and insulting".
Commenting
on Falwell's statements, Sheikh Mohammad Sayed Tantawi, Grand Immam of
Al Azhar, the highest religious authority in the Islamic Sunni world,
stressed that Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), was the
personification of peace.
Falwell's
comments have drawn widespread wrath in several Muslim countries, with
neighbor Iran calling upon members of the 55-nation Organization of
Islamic Conference (OIC) to speak out over the matter.
"This
insult of the holy Prophet Mohammed by a Christian priest is part of a
propaganda war by the U.S. mass media and the Zionists," Iranian
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said on Sunday.
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