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CONTRA COSTA TIMES – February 9, 2006
SF Bay Area Muslims denounce cartoons, violence
By Nathaniel Hoffman
Two San Francisco Bay Area Muslim groups on Wednesday condemned published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and the violent reactions to the cartoons that have spread through the Muslim world this week.
A dozen cartoon depictions of Muhammad, printed in a Danish newspaper in September and republished across Europe and in several U.S. newspapers, have sparked boycotts, protests and violent demonstrations in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Afghanistan and Iran.
The drawings include depictions of the prophet leading a donkey, the prophet's face merged with the star and crescent of Islam, and an obscure drawing with crescents and Stars of David. Another drawing depicts a Danish schoolboy named "Mohammed" apparently chastising the newspaper for provoking Muslims.
The most controversial cartoon depicted Muhammad wearing a bomb on his head.
"The Muslim world is really feeling that the West has not been fair," said Samina Sundas, founder and executive director of American Muslim Voice in Newark. "This is the one thing that broke the camel's hump."
Sundas joined representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and several interfaith groups Wednesday in Fremont to denounce the cartoons, to urge fellow Muslims to protest nonviolently and to encourage the media not to show the offending cartoons.
"We know that there's no limit to free speech, but there is a civic limit," said Safaa Ibrahim, council executive director for the Bay Area.
"We're in a very volatile climate right now and this is adding fuel to the fire."
Islamic tradition forbids depictions of Muhammad and other Muslim prophets, including Moses and Jesus. But it was not just the pictures that offended many Muslims around the world, it was the context in which they were published, Ibrahim said.
"It's not really about the cartoon," she said. "It's about the Iraqi war, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the desecration of the Quran."
Mohammad Chaudhry, president of the Islamic Center of the East Bay in Antioch, said the publication of the cartoons saddened him.
"There was no need to injure the feelings of people who constitute one in six of the total human population," Chaudhry said. "I call it highly irresponsible."
Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Jews protest when their faiths are lampooned in the mass media, he said.
"The very word 'caricature' means that the effort is to mock and to ridicule in the way of conveying a message."
Chaudhry and Sundas had not viewed the cartoons and said they did not want to.
Amer Araim, an imam and adjunct professor at Diablo Valley College, said that in linking Islam and its prophet to terrorism, the cartoon furthered misunderstanding about one of the world's major religions.
"We are really bothered by this depiction," Araim said. "But we believe in peaceful expression of opinions."
Sundas urged Muslims to consider a story about the prophet when he was criticized.
A woman threw garbage at Muhammad every day as he walked by her house, Sundas said.
"One day she didn't throw it," Sundas said. "He knocked on the door to ask if she was OK."
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/crime_courts/13828257.htm
February 9, 2006 - Mercury News
Bay Area Muslims decry the furor over cartoon
By Jessie Mangaliman
At least once a week, Maha ElGenaidi stands before a group of people to answer questions about her faith, Islam, with a well-executed PowerPoint presentation.
Wednesday, ElGenaidi, executive director of the San Jose-based Islamic Networks Group, tossed her usual script.
The growing violent protests sparked by the publication in Denmark of caricatures of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad compelled her to alter the educational presentation she had planned for a Palo Alto synagogue. She also tried to answer a question that seemed to be on everyone's mind: What are moderate Muslims doing to condemn the violence?
``It's very difficult to work in this political environment. First, we have to denounce the violence and say it's not consistent with the Islamic spirit,'' said ElGenaidi, who said the public image of Muslims in America ``is one-dimensional: Islam equals violence equals extremism.''
Wednesday, leaders of the Bay Area's Islamic community joined with interfaith groups to urge an increased public discourse on Islam and also denounce the violence that has engulfed Damascus, Beirut, Denmark, Iran and Afghanistan.
At a press conference in Fremont, local officials of the national civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations called on all Muslims in the United States to reject the violence because it reinforces ``existing stereotypes'' of Muslims.
``This has been an emotional subject for Muslims,'' said Sameena Faheem-Sundas, executive director of the American Muslim Voice, an educational non-profit in Fremont. ``And they're feeling hurt and responding emotionally.''
The protests and violence make ElGenaidi's presentations -- on the tenets of Islam and the demographics of Muslims in America -- all the more urgent, some community leaders said.
ElGenaidi's group conducts hundreds of educational presentations and cultural competency training about Islam in schools, hospitals, police departments and other public institutions in California and 12 other states. Founded 14 years ago, the group's non-political, non-partisan goal is to dispel stereotypes through education.
Eli Taub, a member of Santa Clara County's Human Relations Commission, invited ElGenaidi to speak at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto Wednesday.
Muslims and Jews may never see eye to eye on political issues, Taub said, but a dialogue ``can lead to mutual understanding.''
``Maha's coming here today,'' Taub said, ``is a step in that direction.''
The audience of retired men and women at Kol Emeth was responsive in general, but one member, David Meir-Levi, a Menlo Park insurance agent, challenged ElGenaidi's assertion that the non-violent, moderate voice of Islam is being drowned by extremists.
Said Meir-Levi, ``Her message seems to be, `Islam, the way we wish it were.' ''
Meir-Levi, citing hadith, oral traditions attributed to Muhammad, said the historical roots of animosity and violence between Muslims and Jews continue to play out today.
The offending cartoons were first published in Denmark in September, commissioned by a newspaper editor who said he wanted to test the limits of freedom of speech. But violence erupted recently -- in Denmark, France, Iran, Afghanistan and Indonesia -- when European newspapers republished the caricatures.
``These cartoons incite hate and bigotry,'' said Safa Ibrahim, executive director of CAIR's Northern California chapter, which held the news conference. ``We're responding with education. We want people to learn about Islam rather than form their opinions from a cartoon.''
ING's educational films about Islam have been used in Bay Area schools.
``This goes beyond textbooks because they see in person someone who practices the faith,'' said Jaya Subramanian, a teacher at Presentation High School, an all-girl Catholic high school in Willow Glen where ING speakers have presented their views. ``So when they see the news, and see Muslims, see violence, they can think critically and realize this is not representative of all Muslims.''
Larry Swaim, executive director of the Interfaith Freedom Foundation, said the education about Islam is most important in schools that Muslim students attend.
``Kids who are a part of religious minorities get picked on,'' said Swaim. ``It often boils down to bullying. Other kids find out you're Muslim and you quickly become Osama bin Laden.''
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/the_valley/13828027.htm
Oakland Tribune – February 9, 2006
Local Muslims blast satirical cartoons,
violence they spawned
Bay Area Islamic leaders defend their faith as a religion of peace
By Jonathan Jones
FREMONT — A group of 10 religious and civil rights leaders held a news conference Wednesday at Fremont Congregational Church to encourage interfaith dialogue and to condemn the violent protests following the publication of controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
But the Bay Area Muslim leaders, who included members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American Muslim Voice, spent much of the news conference defending their faith as a religion of peace and explaining their objections to the cartoons to members of the media.
"I think there is an 'us versus them' mentality," said Safaa Ibrahim, executive director of the Bay Area's Council on American-Islamic Relations. "There is a frustration that we have to constantly defend ourselves. I'd rather not be on the defensive. I'd rather just educate people about our faith."
The news conference highlights how the cartoons have ignited passions on all sides and triggered widespread debate over issues of multiculturalism and freedom of expression.
Hani Shukrallah, editor of Cairo-based Al Ahram Weekly and a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, said this issue has developed into a "so-called" clash of civilizations by those who believe Islam is at war with Western values.
"The fundamental thing about racism is contempt, and this is what you see in the way the whole issue is being framed," Shukrallah said during a discussion about the cartoons at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "It is being framed as a clash of civilizations by both sides."
The controversy began when a Danish newspaper published a series of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. One cartoon depicted Muhammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb. Another depicted Muhammad meeting a line of suicide bombers as they entered heaven and informing them that heaven was out of virgins. Depicting the prophet is prohibited in Islam.
The satirical cartoons inflamed Muslims, causing protests across Europe and the Middle East, which in turn has created a backlash against Muslim groups in the United States, speakers at the news conference said. CAIR's office has received 27 cases of hate mail since the beginning of the year, including 11 in the past week, Ibrahim said.
At the news conference, Samina F. Sundas, founder and executive director of American Muslim Voice, read a letter she received Wednesday morning asking Muslims to leave the country.
"Why should I leave?" Sundas said. "This is my country too. There are (an estimated) 8 million Muslims here, and we're not going anywhere."
Although she insisted that Islam is a religion of peace, Ibrahim said she was not surprised by the violent demonstrations in the Middle East.
"There is a culmination of issues and a worldwide climate right now, especially in the Muslim world," Ibrahim said. "You've got the Iraq war. You've got the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. ... Muslims in the Muslim world are thinking this is not a war on terrorism, this is a war on Islam."
For local Muslim leaders, the challenge is twofold: They are defending themselves against negative stereotypes in the media at the same they are faced with Muslim extremists who act in a way that backs up some of those stereotypes, Ibrahim said.
"People are using (Islam) to carry out some of the frustrations that they have," she said. "But this is not just about the defamation of Muhammad. Each Muslim is feeling like it's saying 'You're a terrorist. ...' So you're defaming my character as well."
Leaders from the Interfaith Freedom Foundation, the World Alliance for Humanity, Multifaith Voices for Peace & Justice and the Indo American Community Federation spoke at the event.
Chris Schriner, a pastor of Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation who participated in the news conference, said he was disturbed that many of the Muslim leaders had to state repeatedly that they condemned violent acts.
"I've got much more understanding of how stressful it is and how frustrating it is to be a Muslim in public dialogue because of the question-and-answer portion," Schriner said. "The questions seemed to indicate that some of listeners simply did not believe that these people were being honest and forthright because they kept asking whether they condemn the violence even though they had explicitly said so."
Ibrahim added: "For us to assume that all Muslims responded that way (with violence), we have a problem here."
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_3490634
Detroit Free Press - February 8, 2006
Detroit: Religious groups decry reaction to caricatures
BY DAVID CRUMM and NIRAJ WARIKOO
Local religious leaders expressed sorrow and frustration Tuesday that explosive reactions to cartoons depicting Islam's Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper led to more deaths in Asia and sparked an Iranian newspaper's call for cartoons belittling the Holocaust.
"This is regrettable in many ways," said Robert Cohen, the head of the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit.
The Detroit-area Jewish community, like other local religious groups, condemned offensive portrayals of religious images and decried the violent protests. But Cohen said he's frustrated "that this Iranian call for Holocaust cartoons is trying to turn this into a Jewish story."
Cohen said, "For Iranians to label those cartoons as a Zionist plot is absurd and cynical. For them to hold a contest calling for cartoons about the Holocaust is simply repugnant."
Christian leaders said they are horrified as well that the situation is spinning in dangerous new directions.
Msgr. Pat Halfpenny, pastor of St. Paul on the Lake Catholic Church in Grosse Pointe Farms, said, "I believe that deliberately mocking a religious leader like this is deeply offensive, but the saddest part of this is that human lives have been lost because of a cartoon."
The Rev. Dan Krichbaum, a United Methodist and head of the National Conference for Community and Justice in Detroit, said, "This violence and hate we're seeing is not what truly lies at the core of our religious traditions. At the core is a call for respect and kindness toward all people.
"The people at the center of these violent incidents are not expressing the truth of our religions," Krichbaum said. "They're using religion as an excuse for violence. People need to step away from this controversy and cool down."
Muslim leaders also balanced decrying the cartoons with condemning the violence.
"This kind of violence is contrary to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad," said Dawud Walid, Michigan head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "These cartoons should never have been printed, but the Prophet Muhammad said that we should not reciprocate by returning evil for evil. We are to reply to evil only with good."
Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the cartoons were offensive, but "under no circumstances do we accept the harming of any individuals or destroying any property or embassy in any country."
Bilal Dabaja, a student at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said the cartoons only add "fuel to the fire" of stormy relations with the Muslim world. "There is freedom of the press, but there should be limits," Dabaja said.
Rabbi Daniel Nevins of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills said he hopes leaders on all sides will tone down the fiery rhetoric. "Right now, we have to resist the temptation to bait one another in this fashion. We need to calm the passion," he said.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060208/NEWS05/602080307
Washington Post - February 5 ,2006
Washington area Muslims react with tempered anger
Some say depiction overstepped liberties
By Caryle Murphy
Wearing a brown golf cap against the cold drizzle, Rocky Omary stood outside Walima Cafe in Falls Church, where he and about 50 other men of Middle Eastern descent had just watched the Tunisian soccer team take a drubbing from the Nigerians.
That trouncing was bad enough. But Omary had other, more disturbing, insults on his mind: specifically, the recent publication in European newspapers of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.
"I've been getting a lot of e-mails about it, and I'm distributing them all," said Omary, a Damascus native who sells real estate in Northern Virginia. "There is a limit to freedom. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. Let's have some respect."
A few miles away at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Sterling, Zaki Al Barzinji,16 , was equally upset.
"Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should say something," the teenager said. "If somebody showed a picture of the pope with a bomb on his head, that would cause a great public outcry. Nobody would be talking about freedom of speech."
Washington area Muslims say they are closely following the furor in Europe and other parts of the world sparked by the cartoons, which first appeared in Denmark and Norway. In interviews yesterday, they expressed anger and hurt feelings. And although they said they recognized the value of freedom of speech, they said the freedom must be matched with respect and responsibility.
"Technically, you have the right to walk into a crowded theater and yell 'Fire,' " said Uzma Unus,34 , a teacher in Sterling who is also vice president of ADAMS. "But is that responsible?"
Several were critical of the violent reactions of some Muslims in Europe and the Middle East. The better way to respond, they added, is through dialogue and peaceful protests, such as the recently launched boycott of Danish dairy products.
"We don't want what is happening in Europe . . . to cross over to the United States," ADAMS Deputy Imam Sheikh Rashid Lamptey told about 150 men and women attending midday prayers. "We want to conduct [our protests] in a very orderly way."
The cartoons, including one showing Muhammad with a bomb in his head covering, have drawn escalating outrage from Muslims in England, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and in the Palestinian territories.
Yesterday, crowds in Syria set fire to the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish embassies. And, according to a wire report, a radical Islamic preacher in Lebanon demanded that the Danish editor who first printed the cartoons be killed.
Such reactions are "not warranted," said Robert Marro of Great Falls, who was attending prayers at ADAMS. Europeans could have defused the situation by apologizing instead of staking out a hard-line position of upholding free speech, he said.
"Growing up in America, I'm used to political cartoons, but . . . it's clear that this just crossed the line," said Marro, a retired U.S. diplomat. "What would the reaction have been if on Jan. 16, The Washington Post had published a picture of Martin Luther King with gangsta-rap clothing, a crack pipe and a Saturday night special? . . . It would have provoked a storm of outrage."
The cartoons doubly offended Muslims, because in addition to depicting Muhammad in a pejorative manner, they violated Islam's longtime prohibition on any image of the prophet, his family or early companions.
ADAMS's imam, Mohamed Magid, explained that the ban stems from early Islam, when Muhammad preached monotheism in a culture steeped in the worship of idols.
To discourage such idolatry, he ordered Muslims not to draw, and religious leaders have interpreted this to mean that the prophet was banning images of himself and those close to him so they would never become objects of worship for Muslims, Magid said. "We don't want to attribute divinity to the prophet," he said.
Cautioning his congregation not to overreact, Magid urged them to follow the model set by the prophet, who is said to have always forgiven those who insulted him, including the woman who deposited her trash on him as he passed her home.
Magid also called for "constructive, civilized dialogue so we avoid a clash of civilizations." As part of that effort, he said he and other area Muslim leaders will meet tomorrow with the Danish ambassador to Washington.
At the Falls Church strip mall, where the soccer fans scrunched their shoulders against the damp, cold air, several men voiced appreciation for the U.S. government's criticism of the cartoons. "We salute this
position," said a 39-year-old salesman from Tunisia, who declined to give his name.
Majdi Omouri,30 , a limousine driver, was philosophical. "If you look at freedom as something really large, without limits, it doesn't make sense," he said. "Freedom has to be united with responsibility. . . . In the name of freedom, I cannot insult your beliefs."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401145.html
Chicago Tribune - February 9, 2006
Cartoon controversy hits University of Illinois
By Jodi S. Cohen
The University of Illinois student newspaper Thursday published six caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have sparked violent protests in the Middle East and Asia.
Nearly every major U.S. newspaper, including the Chicago Tribune, has not published the cartoons. They were first published in late September by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and they were reprinted in other European publications in recent weeks.
While UN Secretary General Kofi Annan chastised newspapers Thursday that continue to publish the cartoons, Daily Illini editor-in-chief Acton Gorton said he decided to print them so students could better understand the Muslim response.
"All across this nation, editors are gripped in fear of printing for fear of the reaction. As a journalist, this flies in the face of everything I hold dear. By refusing to print these editorial cartoons, we are preventing an important issue from being debated by the public," Gorton wrote in a column next to the drawings.
The cartoons portray the prophet as a terrorist, including one that depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb and another showing him turning away suicide bombers from paradise because, he says, heaven ran out of virgins to be given to martyrs. The cartoons have led to protests in Denmark, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
In a letter to the Daily Illini to be published Friday, U. of I. Chancellor Richard Herman wrote that he is "saddened" that the newspaper decided to publish the cartoons. He suggested that the editors could have informed the public by giving readers a Web link to the cartoons instead.
"I believe that the DI could have engaged its readers in legitimate debate about the issues surrounding the cartoons' publication in Denmark without publishing them," he wrote. "It is possible, for instance, to editorialize about pornography without publishing pornographic pictures."
The Tribune has chosen not to publish the cartoons because editors decided the images inaccurately depicted Islam as a violent religion, and that it was not necessary to print the cartoons in order to explain them to readers.
U. of I. senior Ehav Yasin, a Muslim student from Carpentersville, said he was upset by the Daily Illini’s decision.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-060209cartoons,1,5398097.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
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