The poster in question features English actor Sacha Baron Cohen pictured almost naked wearing a ring engraved with the word “Allah” in Arabic along with a face mask to cover his genitals in tribute to the ‘mankini’ his character wore in the first Borat film.
A promo poster for the new Borat film that can be seen on the side of many Paris buses has angered some Muslims who have taken to social media to accuse the authorities of provocation and insulting Islam, according to The Times.
Muslim anger at the image comes at a time of high tensions between Muslims and the French state, following the gruesome murder of school teacher Samuel Paty last month and the October 29 terror attack in Nice that left three people dead.
Protests have also taken place in Muslim-majority countries around the world in recent weeks following comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron in defence of controversial depictions of the Prophet Mohammed published in French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, itself the victim of a terror attack in 2015 that killed 12 people.
Some Muslim leaders, including Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took exception to Macron’s comments and Erdogan called for a boycott of French goods.
France and other European countries, including the UK, have raised their terror level alerts in response to the recent attacks.
Bus drivers in Paris, many of whom are Muslim, have appealed to the city’s transport authority to remove the poster, according to Le Point.
But the Parisian transit authority RATP has stood firm, saying it would ‘under no circumstances’ take this campaign off our network, according to Le Parisien.
However, the advert has been removed from TICE network buses which cover Evry, a southern suburb with a large Muslim population, according to The Times.
The poster controversy has drawn a mixed reaction on social media.
One Paris bus driver took to Twitter to complain about the poster, saying he wanted to deface it.
Others welcomed the decision of TICE bosses to remove the poster.
But others approved of the refusal of the RATP to take the poster down.
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