French imams try to BS the public by pretending to rail against 'crazies who have seized our religion'

Paris (AFP) - French imams condemned violence committed in the name of Islam during Friday prayers as the country reeled from the double hostage dramas that followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine.

The same message -- distancing the country's five million Muslims from the jihadists responsible for the attacks -- was relayed at more than 2,300 mosques across France.

"We denounce the odious crimes committed by the terrorists, whose criminal action endangers our willingness to live together," said the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur.

He also appealed to "all the Muslims of France" to take part in demonstrations planned for Sunday to pay homage to the 12 victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, the bloodiest in France in more than half a century.

In local mosques across the country, imams condemned the jihadists who claimed they were avenging the Prophet Mohammed by shooting dead some of France's best-known cartoonists at the satirical weekly.

Charlie Hebdo had angered many Muslims by repeatedly publishing cartoons that featured the Prophet as it lampooned Islamist extremists.

Muslim groups had taken the magazine to court over the drawings but had lost.

"The people who carried out that attack in the name of Islam are not Muslims... The Prophet did not advocate violence against non-Muslims," Abdel Qader Achour, of the conservative Omar Ibn Al Khattab mosque not far from Charlie Hebdo's offices, insisted.

"France is our country, we have been here for three or even four generations, and we should not be afraid," he said as around one thousand of the faithful gathered to pray.

"To a cartoon you reply with a cartoon, to a drawing with a drawing, to a newspaper article with a newspaper article... But you don't reply with guns," said Mustafa Riad of the Union mosque in the southern city of Montpellier.

Muslim theologian Tareq Oubrou, an imam in Bordeaux, in the southwest, said Muslims were furious that their religion had been "confiscated by crazies... and uneducated, unbalanced people".

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