Violent crowds filled the streets of several cities

A television station employee was shot dead on Friday in the northwestern city
of Peshawar as violent crowds filled the streets of several cities on a day of
government-sanctioned protests against an anti-Islam film made in the United
States.

The unrest came as governments and Western institutions in many parts of the
Muslim world braced for protests after Friday Prayer an occasion often
associated with demonstrations as worshipers leave mosques. In Tunisia, the
authorities invoked emergency powers to outlaw all demonstrations, fearing an
outpouring of anti-Western protest inspired both by the American-made film and
by cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a French satirical weekly.

American diplomatic posts in India, Indonesia and elsewhere closed for the day.
In Bangladesh, several thousand activists from Islamic organizations took over
roads in the center of the capital, Dhaka after prayers. They chanted "death to
the United States and death to the French" and set on fire a symbolic coffin for
President Obama that was draped with the American flag, as well as an effigy of
Mr. Obama. They also burned the American and French flags. The protesters
threatened to seize the American Embassy on Saturday, but a police order
banned any further demonstrations. Separate protests took place outside of
Dhaka as well.

European countries took steps to forestall protests among their own Muslim
minorities and against their missions abroad. France had already announced the
closure on Friday of embassies and other institutions in 20 countries while, in
Paris, some Muslim leaders urged their followers to heed a government ban on
weekend demonstrations protesting against denigration of the prophet.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said officials throughout the country had orders to
prevent all protests and crack down if the ban was challenged. "There will be
strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up," Mr. Valls
said.

The German Interior Ministry said it was postponing a poster campaign aimed at
countering radical Islam to avoid fueling protests among the country's four
million Muslims, The Associated Press reported.
In Pakistan, the scene of the most turbulent unrest, ARY News said that a driver,
Muhammad Amir, was shot three times by the police as he drove through an
area where stick-wielding protesters were burning a movie theater owned by a
prominent politician.

The station repeatedly broadcast graphic footage of hospital staff giving

emergency treatment to Mr. Amir, apparently shortly before he died. Other
Pakistani journalists condemned the footage as insensitive and irresponsible.

Businesses closed and streets emptied across the country as the government
declared a national holiday, the "Day of Love for the Prophet Muhammad," to
encourage peaceful protests against the controversial film that has ignited
protest across the Muslim world for more than a week.

"An attack on the holy prophet is an attack on the core belief of 1.5 billion
Muslims. Therefore, this is something that is unacceptable," said Prime Minister
Raja Pervez Ashraf in an address to a religious conference Friday morning in
Islamabad.

Mr. Ashraf called on the United Nations and international community to

formulate a law outlawing hate speech across the world. "Blasphemy of the kind
witnessed in this case is nothing short of hate speech, equal to the worst kind of
anti-Semitism or other kind of bigotry," he said.

But the scenes of chaos in some parts of the country as the day progressed
suggested that the government had failed to control public anger on the issue.

In Peshawar, where the television employee was killed, protesters attacked and
burned two movie theaters, breaking through the windows with sticks and
setting fire to posters that featured images of female movie stars.

Television footage showed the police firing in the air to disperse the crowd, and
a hospital official said that at least 15 people, including three police officers,
were injured.
In Islamabad, where thousands of protesters flooded toward the heavily guarded
diplomatic enclave, Express News reported that the police ran out of rubber
bullets because of heavy firing.

A television reporter said that when protesters in nearby Rawalpindi ran out of
material to burn, they broke into several tire shops along a major road to steal
fresh supplies.

The government cut off cellphone coverage in major cities, while the authorities
in Islamabad sealed all exits to the city after Friday Prayer, state radio reported.
Some Pakistanis were relying on e-mail and social media sites, like Twitter, to
communicate.

Expressions of weary anger over the violence were common. "We are not a
nation. We are a mob," said Nadeem F. Paracha, a cultural commentator with
Dawn newspaper, on Twitter.

Large shipping containers blocked roads through the center of several cities.
Western diplomatic missions were closed for the day.

The State Department spent $70,000 on Urdu-language advertisements that were

broadcast on several television channels, dissociating the American government
from the inflammatory film.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced it had summoned the American

charge d'affaires, Richard Hoagland, asking him to have the anti-Islam film
removed from YouTube, which has been entirely blocked in Pakistan for the past
several days.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris and Julfikar Ali Manik from Dhaka,
Bangladesh.