Thousands of Muslims gathered across France on Friday to denounce the beheading of tourist Herve Gourdel by militants in Algeria who said their act was a response to French strikes against Islamic State fighters.
France's five-million-strong Muslim population is the largest in Europe. Some on the French right have suggested the community has not condemned Gourdel's murder this week strongly enough, a charge its leaders reject.
"He was the victim of a cowardly murder," Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris told hundreds of Muslims gathered outside the mosque after noon prayers.
"Islam demands respect of life ... The Koran tells us that to kill one man is to kill all humanity," he said. Similar gatherings were planned in the southern port of Marseille and Nantes in the west.
In a video released by his captors on Wednesday, 55-year-old tour guide Gourdel is seen kneeling with his arms tied behind his back before four masked militants. The video does not show the beheading, but a militant holds the head up to the camera.
France was the first Western country to join the U.S.-led strikes on targets in Iraq. Its jets have carried out a new attack since the murder and a poll released on Friday showed public support for intervention surged to nearly 69 percent.
Also on Friday, a group of prominent French Muslims published a declaration in the daily Le Figaro denouncing the beheading of their compatriot by Islamic State , which had said it would attack the "dirty French" because Paris had joined the U.S.-led military offensive against it. The declaration ended by saying:
"We, French of the Muslim faith, wish to express our total solidarity with all victims of this horde of barbarians, lost soldiers of an alleged Islamic state, and condemn in the strongest terms all acts of violence committed in the name of a murderous ideology hiding behind the Islamic religion by confiscating its vocabulary. No one can claim the right to speak on our behalf. To better demonstrate our solidarity in the present dramatic circumstances, we claim the honor of saying that 'we are also dirty French'."
