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Washington Post - February 2, 2006
Offending cartoons reprinted by European dailies
By Molly Moore
PARIS, Feb. 1 -- Newspapers across Europe reprinted cartoons Wednesday ridiculing the prophet Muhammad, saying they wanted to support the right of Danish and Norwegian papers to publish the caricatures, which have ignited fury among Muslims throughout the world.
Germany's Die Welt daily newspaper published one of the drawings on its front page and said the "right to blasphemy" is one of the freedoms of democracy.
"The appearance of 12 drawings in the Danish press provoked emotions in the Muslim world because the representation of Allah and his prophet is forbidden," the French afternoon newspaper France Soir wrote. "But because no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society, France Soir is publishing the incriminating caricatures."
The newspaper's front-page headline declared: "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God," accompanied by a new cartoon depicting religious figures from the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Christian faiths on a cloud. The Christian is shown saying, "Don't complain, Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here."
France Soir paired its story and caricatures with a column by French theologian Sohaib Bencheikh, who admonished: "One must find the borders between freedom of expression and freedom to protect the sacred." He added, "Unfortunately, the West has lost its sense of the sacred."
Italy's La Stampa newspaper and the daily El Periodico in Spain also published some of the drawings Wednesday.
Islam considers any artistic renditions of Muhammad blasphemous. In many Muslim nations, English-language newspapers are so reverential that any mention of his name is followed by the letters PBUH, for "peace be upon him."
Outrage over the appearance of the cartoons in Danish and Norwegian newspapers -- one of which depicted Muhammad as an apparent terrorist with a bomb in his turban -- has ignited demonstrations from Turkey to the Gaza Strip, prompted a boycott of Danish products throughout the Middle East, and spurred calls for a religious decree to attack Danish troops serving in Iraq.
The newspapers also have riled Muslim populations in their home countries. Many of Western Europe's estimated 15 million Muslims feel alienated by cultural barriers and job discrimination and stigmatized by anti-immigration movements and anti-terrorism laws that they believe unfairly target members of their faith.
Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, said the French newspaper's decision to publish the offensive cartoons was an act of "real provocation towards the millions of Muslims living in France."
The conservative Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, which first published the caricatures in September, this week apologized for offending Muslims but defended its right to publish the cartoons. Two offices of the newspaper were evacuated this week after receiving bomb threats.
The controversy began when the newspaper asked 12 artists to draw caricatures of Muhammad in response to an author who complained that he could not find an artist willing, under his own name, to illustrate a book about the prophet.
Three weeks ago, a small, evangelical Christian newspaper in Norway, Magazinet, reprinted the cartoons.
Government ministers from 17 Arab nations have asked the Danish government to punish the Jyllands-Posten newspaper for what they called an "offense to Islam."
The French-based Carrefour grocery chain pulled Danish products from its shelves in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar in response to a boycott the company said was costing it $2.4 million a day, about 8 percent of its global revenue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020102234.html
Reuters - February 2, 2006
Cartoon blasphemy uproar gathers pace
By Tom Heneghan
PARIS (Reuters) - An international row over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad gathered pace on Thursday as more European dailies printed controversial Danish caricatures and Muslims increased pressure to stop them.
A dozen Palestinian gunmen surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology for the cartoons, one of which shows Islam's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.
Afghanistan condemned the publication of the caricatures and about 400 Islamic school students set fire to French and Danish flags in protest in the city of Multan in central Pakistan.
The owner of France Soir, a Paris daily that reprinted the cartoons on Wednesday along with a German paper, sacked its managing editor to show "a strong sign of respect for the beliefs and intimate convictions of every individual".
But the tabloid defended its right to print the cartoons, first published last September in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.
Le Temps in Geneva and Budapest's Magyar Hirlap ran another offending cartoon showing an imam telling suicide bombers to stop because Heaven had run out of virgins to reward them.
Several European publications, such as Spain's ABC newspaper and Periodico de Catalunya, showed photographs of papers which had published the cartoons. Other European dailies including France's Le Monde printed cartoons mocking the row.
Western free speech versus taboos in Islam?
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the issue had gone beyond a row between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and now centered on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam, which is now the second religion in many European countries.
"We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work," Rasmussen told the Copenhagen daily Politiken. "One can safely say it is now an even bigger issue."
Rasmussen's office said he and Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller had summoned foreign envoys in Copenhagen for a Friday meeting to discuss the outcry and the government's response.
Denmark's ambassador in Paris met leaders of French Muslims, who have threatened legal action. The ambassador handed over a letter of regret from Rasmussen, written in Arabic, and an apology from the director of Jyllands-Posten.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble both defended press freedom, but Douste-Blazy called for restraint and Schaeuble said the press must "deal with what it has got into".
European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner also urged restraint after talks in Brussels with Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul-Rahman al-Attiyah, who criticized the cartoons.
"We are ... a society that likes tolerance and I think it has to be in our understanding that we have a sensitivity for other religious communities," Ferrero-Waldner told reporters.
Danish companies have reported sales falling in the Middle East after protests against the cartoons in the Arab world and calls for boycotts. Morocco and Tunisia confiscated Wednesday's France Soir, which is widely distributed in North Africa.
The Islamic Society of Finland said Muslims there had joined the boycott of Danish goods to protest against the cartoons.
Criticism mounts
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said Riyadh considered the cartoons an insult to Mohammad and all Muslims. "We hope that religious centers like the Vatican will clarify their opinion in this respect," he told the state news agency SPA.
Afghanistan said publication of the caricatures would give ammunition to those seeking to disrupt international relations.
"Any insult to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) is an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.
In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon's Shi'ite Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out.
The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Muslims in 1989 to kill Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam in his book "The Satanic Verses". Rushdie went into hiding and was never attacked.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Mohammad, and Syria have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-02-02T164953Z_01_L02622515_RTRUKOC_0_US-RELIGION-DENMARK-CARTOONS.xml
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