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Student paper reprints cartoons
10/02/2006 08:30 - (SA)
Champaign - The student-run newspaper that serves the University of Illinois community on Thursday ran reprints of some of the cartoons that have sparked outrage and violence around the Islamic world.
The Daily Illini, which was independent of the university, ran only six of the 12 cartoons first published in September in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten, but led with the one that had caused the greatest furor: a depiction of Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as part of his turban.
Daily Illini editor-in-chief Acton H Gordon said: "I've been fielding calls all day, and there are a lot of e-mail messages, too.
"The reaction has been both good and bad. The Muslim community is upset, and understandably so."
Violation of Islamic law
Gordon, 25, said he planned to meet with leaders of the local Muslim community late on Thursday.
He said: "Running the cartoons was primarily my own decision. It was something I felt strongly about."
In an accompanying editorial, Gordon wrote that he agreed the pictures could be seen as a violation of Islamic law and said he personally found them "bigoted and insensitive".
He said: "By refusing to run the cartoons, Americans have no idea how 'offensive' they are. The ensuing death threats, riots, murders and laying siege to embassies, leave most of us confused and appalled.
"If anything, journalists all over this country should be letting the public decide for themselves what to think of these cartoons."
Since the initial publication in Denmark, media in France, Germany, the United States, Britain, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Greenland, Bulgaria, Portugal and Jordan had reprinted the cartoons.
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