Belgrade, January 13, 2015
The Serbian Orthodox Church has condemned the position of the country’s electronic and print media that reprinted the Islamic Prophet Mohammad cartoons from the Charlie Hebdo French daily in sympathy with the journalists, killed in the terrorist attack on January 7, reports RIA-Novosti.
According to Bishop Irinej of Backa, ridiculing historic figures who shaped the unique religious identity of hundreds of millions of our contemporaries goes beyond the scope of freedom of speech, guaranteed by law, and is absolutely inadmissible.
“We are calling upon our media workers to stop this spiritual violence immediately and to respect religious sentiments of all citizens. We express our solidarity with brothers Muslims and assure them that the faithful members of the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose religious feelings were insulted in the same or similar way by blasphemous images in some media, by no means approve of such an interpretation of freedom of speech and the secular nature of the society,” the appeal reads.
