Paris (dpa) -It is offensive in Islam to depict any images of the prophet, and cartoons are considered all the more inflammatory. French government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem pointed at the right to free speech but said this must be balanced with the need to maintain public order.

"There is no need to pour oil on the fire," she told broadcaster France 2.

Charlie Hebdo‘s editor Stephane Charbonnier has called the caricatures "absolutely halal," using the Arabic word for actions and things deemed permissible under Islamic law.

"If people want to be shocked, they will be shocked," Charbonnier, who uses the artist‘s name Charb, said at the weekend.

The publisher printed 80,000 copies of the 64-page special edition, marked as part one of a continuing biography of Mohammed, which were selling for 6 euros (8 dollars) at French newsstands.

In September, violent protests rocked many Muslim countries over a low-budget film produced in the United States that depicted the prophet as a blood-thirsty womanizer and paedophile.

Muslim religious and political leaders condemned the film, while in some countries mobs attacked US and other Western embassies.

Mass protests had also erupted across the Muslim world in early 2006 after Danish newspaper the Jyllands-Posten published 12 caricatures lampooning the prophet Mohammed. Author: Gerd Roth