“No violence. For violence is not the right reaction, even before an offence, to one’s religious belief. We want freedom for all religions” and “there is extreme worry” for the attacks on “the Christians in the world”. Today, the Vice President of the European Union Commission, Franco Frattini, spoke again about the fact of the violent protests and demonstrations triggered in several countries with Muslim majorities by the publication of a few caricatures about Muhammad by several European newspapers. At the end of a press conference, Frattini echoed the words of the Pope, stating that “there is a problem of reciprocity when there are repeated violent attacks on the Catholic Church, and when the right of the Catholics to exercise their freedom of religion is threatened”. Finally, the Commissioner stated (as he had done yesterday, during a meeting about freedom of expression and religion promoted in Brussels by the International Journalist Federation), that a few protests “were not spontaneous, for the vast majority of the Islamic people did not understand them and did not accept them”.
