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Poles launch petition against French plan to axe cross in Breton town

Nearly 37,000 people signed an online petition as of Thursday protesting against a French court order to remove a cross from a statue of the late Polish-born Pope John Paul II in Brittany, western France.

Published: 2 November 2017 13:24 CET
Poles launch petition against French plan to axe cross in Breton town
Photo: AFP
The petition, launched on the CitizenGo website four days ago, “opposes the removal of the cross from a public space and emphasises the Christian roots of Europe”.
   
It is addressed to the European Parliament, the centre-right European People's Party and the European Court of Human Rights.
   
Controversy erupted last week when France's top administrative court gave the town of Ploermel six months to remove the cross above a papal statue in a public square in a bid to comply with laws enforcing the secular nature of public spaces.
 
Although the statue of the late pontiff itself is not in question, the court's move drew ire in heavily Roman Catholic Poland where the Polish-born saint is widely revered and religious symbols are not restricted by law.
 
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Unholy row breaks out in France after Breton town told to pull down crossPhoto: AFP

Rightwing Prime Minister Beata Szydlo offered last weekend to move the statue to Poland to “save it from censorship”, calling John Paul II “a great European” symbolising a “united Christian Europe”.
   
Szydlo added that “the dictate of the political correctness — the secularization of the state — opens the door to values   that are culturally alien to us and that lead to Europeans being terrorized in their daily lives”.
   
Gifted to Ploermel by the Georgian-born Russian artist Zourab Tseretel, the statue which features a cross on the arch framing it, was installed in a public square in October 2006.
   
A local citizens group then launched a legal drive to remove the cross citing a century-old French law on the separation of church and state, but the town's mayor refused.
   
After years of legal wrangling, France's top administrative court ruled last Wednesday that the cross must go in line with the 1905 law that rules out “raising or affixing any religious sign or emblem” in a “public place”.
   
The court's decision also drew protests from representatives of the Roman Catholic church in France while conservative French lawmaker Nadine Morano said Wednesday she was launching a separate petition “to include the Christian roots of France in the constitution”.

RELIGION

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

The Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious educational institution, Al-Azhar in Egypt, has called for the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products after far-right activists destroyed Korans in those countries.

Published: 26 January 2023 15:10 CET
Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

Al-Azhar, in a statement issued on Wednesday, called on “Muslims to boycott Dutch and Swedish products”.

It also urged “an appropriate response from the governments of these two countries” which it charged were “protecting despicable and barbaric crimes in the name of ‘freedom of expression'”.

Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan on Saturday set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in front of Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm, raising tensions as Sweden courts Ankara over its bid to join Nato.

EXPLAINED:

The following day, Edwin Wagensveld, who heads the Dutch chapter of the German anti-Islam group Pegida, tore pages out of the Koran during a one-man protest outside parliament.

Images on social media also showed him walking on the torn pages of the holy book.

The desecration of the Koran sparked strong protests from Ankara and furious demonstrations in several capitals of the Muslim world including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the Koran burning, expressing “deep concern at the recurrence of such events and the recent Islamophobic escalation in a certain number of European countries”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful”, while the United States called it “repugnant”.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Turkey and Sweden”.

On Tuesday, Turkey postponed Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Stockholm for allowing weekend protests that included the burning of the Koran.

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