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Hamas gets heavy on media
04/02/2006 12:15 - (SA)
Rome - A top leader of Hamas said caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad printed recently in European media are an "unforgivable insult" that should be punished with death, an Italian paper said on Saturday.
"We should have killed all those who offend the Prophet and instead here we are, protesting peacefully," Mahmoud Zahar, a top leader of the militant Islamic group that won the January 25 Palestinian elections, told Italian daily Il Giornale.
The drawings have sparked growing anger among Muslims.
Bombings and boycotts
In Gaza City, Palestinian militants threw a bomb at a French cultural center on Friday, and many Palestinians began boycotting European goods, especially those from Denmark, where the cartoons where first printed.
Tens of thousands of incensed Muslims marched through Palestinian cities, burned the Danish flag and called for vengeance, as similar protests were held elsewhere in the Muslim world.
"We should have killed them, we should have required just punishment for those who respect neither religion not its holiest symbols," Zahar was quoted as saying in the interview with Il Giornale.
Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet, even positive images, to prevent idolatry.
'Unforgiveable insult'
Zahar described the printing as an "unforgivable insult" and took Europe to task for "doing nothing to reconcile" with the Muslim world, said Il Giornale, a Milan-based conservative daily.
The pictures, including one showing the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb, appeared in a Danish newspaper in September. They were reprinted in several other European newspapers, including in Italy, this week in a show of solidarity and defense of press freedom.
The director of France Soir was fired by the newspaper's Egyptian owner after the paper republished all the cartoons on Wednesday.
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