France affirms respect for Islam in dispute over cartoons

France on Monday affirmed its"profound respect for Islam"in the country's defence of the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

FrenchForeign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said ''We have a first principle which is the highest respect for Islam.I also want to say that Muslims are fully part of society inFrance.''

''The second message is that we're confronted by a terrorism threat, fanaticism, on our soil but also elsewhere, and this battle is a common battle," he added.

Thestatementcomes in the wake of several attacks inFranceapparently provoked by anger over the defence of the caricatures, considered blasphemous by Muslims, as freedom of expression.

After meeting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Le Drian said an "anti-French" campaign in the Muslim world had often been the result of a distortion of French President Emmanuel Macron's comments on the issue.

The Cairo-based Al-Azhar considered the foremost religious institutions for Sunni Muslims, condemned French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's decision in September to reprint the cartoons.

Demonstrations have erupted in several Muslim-majority countries after Macron defended the right to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, which many saw as insulting and an attack on Islam.

Macron's remarks came after a suspected Islamist decapitated a schoolteacher in a Paris suburb on October 16, after he showed the cartoons during a lesson on freedom of expression.

Sisi himself had weighed in, saying last month that “to insult the prophets amounts to underestimating the religious beliefs of many people”.