This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

Security at French embassies around the world has been reinforced after the Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad.

Amid continuing protests by Muslims around the globe over a controversial anti-Islam film, French ministers and religious leaders called for restraint, and riot police were posted outside the magazine's offices.

French embassies and schools in 20 countries will be temporarily closed on Friday, as a precautionary measure in case of fresh protests after prayers, the foreign ministry said.

The offices of Charlie Hebdo were firebombed last November after it published an edition entitled Charia Hebdo, supposedly guest-edited by Muhammad.

France's prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said in a statement: "In the current climate, the prime minister wishes to stress his disapproval of all excesses and calls on everyone to behave responsibly."

Questioned on RTL radio, he added: "We are in a country where the freedom of expression is guaranteed, along with the freedom to caricature. If people really feel their beliefs are offended and think the law has been broken – and we are in a state where the law must be totally respected — they can go to the courts."

He was speaking amid calls for protests in the French capital on Saturday against the film Innocence of Muslims, which has sparked a wave of retaliatory attacks on US and other western embassies around the world.

An Afghan suicide bombing linked to protests about the film killed 12 people on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to more than 30.

Ayrault said a request had been made for police authorisation to hold the demonstration, but that it would be refused. On Sunday, police arrested more than 100 people who had gathered to protest near the US embassy in Paris.

The publication of the caricatures, on the inside and back page of Charlie Hebdo – whose website is blocked, for unknown reasons – brought widespread condemnation.

Essam Erian, the acting head of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said the French judiciary should deal with the issue as firmly as it had handled the case against the magazine that published topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge.

"If the case of Kate (the duchess) is a matter of privacy, then the cartoons are an insult to a whole people. The beliefs of others must be respected," he told Reuters.

Mahmoud Ghozlan, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, said that French law should deal with insults against Islam in the same way as it deals with Holocaust denial.

"If anyone doubts the Holocaust happened, they are imprisoned, yet if anyone insults the prophet, his companions or Islam, the most (France) does is to apologise in two words. It is not fair or logical," he said.

Richard Prasquier, president of the Representative Council for Jewish Institutions, said he disapproved of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons after the killings in the row over the film.

"It is in consideration of those deaths that I disapprove of Charlie Hebdo's initiative," he said in a statement. "To publish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad in these times, in the name of freedom, is an irresponsible kind of panache."

Dalil Boubakeur, the senior imam at the Grande Mosquée de Paris, appealed for France's Muslim community, which is the largest in Europe, to remain calm and not "throw oil on the fire".

André Vingt-Trois, the Catholic Archbishop of Paris, told French radio the cartoons would "provoke revulsion among many Muslim believers, who will feel their faith has been insulted". He added: "You cannot say anything in the name of freedom of expression."

Laurent Fabius, the minister of foreign affairs, said he was "against all provocation".

However, Charlie Hebdo's editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, was unrepentant. He said the latest caricatures would shock "only those who will want to be shocked".

In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten caused an international storm after publishing 12 cartoons depicting Muhammad.

Protests across the world resulted in more than 100 reported deaths. The Danish embassy in Pakistan was bombed, and Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran were set alight.