Cartoons: Muslim anger unabated

2006-02-03 08:26

Copenhagen - The furore in the Muslim world over the publication of cartoons of Prophet Mohammad in Western media raged on Thursday as a battle line was drawn between freedom of the press and respect for Islam.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen tried to bridge the differences in an interview broadcast on Thursday on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

The cartoons first appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September and touched off protests and a boycott of Danish products in most Arab nations.

Rasmussen said: "I would like to make it clear that I am deeply distressed that many Muslims have seen the drawings in the Danish newspaper as a defamation of the Prophet Muhammad.

"I know that this was not the intention of the newspaper, (which) has apologised for that and I do hope that we can find a solution on that basis."

Freedom of expression

Newspapers and magazines in several European countries including Norway and France also had published, in the name of freedom of expression, the sketches that showed Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban and as a sword-wielding nomad flanked by two women shrouded in black.

To Muslims, the cartoons were blasphemous as Islam prohibited any images of the prophet.

The firestorm of reaction spread throughout the Middle East. A source from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said that in the Palestinian territories, two masked gunmen briefly seized a German national from a hotel in Nablus, West Bank, "thinking he was French or Danish, and handed him over to police after realising their mistake".

He said: "The two men were acting to protest over the cartoons."

Earlier, two armed groups threatened to target Danes, French and Norwegians in the Palestinian territories.

Fear of violence

Palestinian gunmen besieged the European Union headquarters in the Gaza Strip and scrawled "Closed Until Apology is Made to the Muslims" on the gate to the building, which had not opened for business for fear of violence.

The government of Norway closed its West Bank mission to the public, saying it was taking the threats "very seriously".

Newspapers in Cairo chastised the European press. Al-Gomhurriya, a top state-owned daily, said: "It is a conspiracy against Islam and Muslims, which has been in the works for years."

Going against the flow, the Jordanian tabloid al-Shihan defiantly published three of the cartoons. Its publishing company later pulled all copies from the newsstands and fired the paper's editor-in-chief, Jihad Momani.

Momani had written: "Muslims of the world, be reasonable."

Before he was fired, Momani had said he decided to publish the offending cartoons "so people know what they are protesting about.... People are attacking drawings that they have not even seen".

- AFP