Posted on 02/03/2006 6:51:22 AM PST by Cornpone
PARIS (Reuters) - Denmark said on Friday it could not apologise for cartoons in a Danish newspaper depicting the Prophet Mohammad as outrage spread across the Muslim world from the Middle East to countries in Asia.
More European newspapers published the cartoons on Friday, arguing freedom of speech was sacred, but angry Muslims staged violent protests against jokes they consider "blasphemous".
"Neither the Danish government nor the Danish nation as such can be held responsible for drawings published in a Danish newspaper," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after meeting with Muslim envoys in Copenhagen.
"A Danish government can never apologise on behalf of a free and independent newspaper," he said. "This is basically a dispute between some Muslims and a newspaper."
Up to 300 hardline Islamic activists in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, went on a rampage in the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta.
Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), they smashed lamps with bamboo sticks, threw chairs, lobbed rotten eggs and tomatoes and tore up a Danish flag. No one was hurt.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, hundreds of Palestinians attended a Hamas-organised rally, tearing up a French flag and holding up banners reading: "The assault on the Prophet is an assault on Islam".
The drawings, first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten, have sparked international fury and a debate on the clash between freedom of speech and respect for religion.
Mona Omar Attia, Egypt's ambassador to Denmark, said after a meeting with Rasmussen that she was satisfied with the position of the Danish government but noted the prime minister had said he could not interfere with the press.
"This means the whole story will continue and that we are back to square one again. The government of Denmark has to do something to appease the Muslim world," Attia said.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin said the dispute was not just between Jakarta and Copenhagen.
"It involves the whole Islamic world vis-a-vis Denmark and vis-a-vis the trend of Islamophobia," he said.
Pakistan's parliament on Friday passed a resolution condemning the cartoons as "blasphemous and derogatory".
Some Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous. Among the Danish drawings, one depicted him in a turban resembling a bomb.
"This vicious, outrageous and provocative campaign cannot be justified in the name of freedom of expression or of the press," the Senate resolution said.
Danish companies have reported sales falling in the Middle East after protests in the Arab world and calls for boycotts.
Palestinian gunmen seized and later released a German on Thursday, and a hand grenade was thrown into the compound of the French Cultural Centre in the Gaza Strip.
"UNACCEPTABLE" PROTESTS
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned the protests in a television interview.
"I am totally shocked and find it unacceptable that -- because there have been caricatures in the West -- extremists can burn flags or take fundamentalist or extremist positions which would prove the cartoonists right," he said.
Rasmussen said he hoped the situation would improve soon.
"If the protests escalate further, it may have unpredictable repercussions in all the countries affected and then the problem could grow into a more global one, and I think it's in our mutual interest to find a solution to that," he said.
The editor of a Norwegian magazine which reprinted the Danish cartoons said he had received 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages.
A Jordanian editor was sacked for reprinting them, despite saying his purpose had been only to show the extent of the Danish insult to Islam. "Oh I ask God to forgive me," Jihad Momani wrote in a public letter of apology.
Iraqi Christians said they feared a new wave of attacks by Muslims, driven by anger over the images.
MEDIA FREEDOM
European newspapers said publishing the cartoons was an expression of media freedom.
"Liberation defends the freedom of expression," French daily Liberation said in a headline introducing two of the cartoons, one of which depicted an imam telling suicide bombers to stop because Heaven had run out of virgins with which to reward them.
Belgian newspaper De Standaard reproduced the pictures along with letters from readers in favour of publication.
"Two values are in conflict here. One is respect for religion and the other is freedom of speech," Editor-in-Chief Peter Vandermeersch told Reuters.
British newspapers have so far refused to publish the cartoons, earning them praise from Foreign Minister Jack Straw.
"I believe the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong," he said.
"I place on record my regard for the British media, which has shown considerable responsibility and sensitivity."
More protests were expected in the Muslim world. In Iran, worshippers were expected to take part in a nationwide rally after Friday prayers to protest.
The Muslim complaints are off base and inappropriate. People require protection of the law, not ideas.
These people are absolutely insane (Muslims).
Belloc isn't entirely correct. Our strengths are also our weaknesses. Certitude in incorrect ideas inevitably will lead to problems. Muslim certitude in a primitive, violent, warlike religion will be the undoing of Islam. Sure, the West and the rest of the non-Islamic world is fragmented, divided, and sometimes uncertain of itself and its own values. But when push comes to shove, and when survival is at stake, the West will rise again.
When that day comes and what it will take, I don't know. But these comics have done more to wake people up than all the warnings from people usually written off by the media as "Islamophobes". Amazing.
The real infidels are the Muslims.
Be my guest, I borrowed it from someone, can't remember who.
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/000647.html
Can anyone on these threads confirm:
1. Images of Mohammed, as opposed to Allah, are forbidden by the Koran.
2. They are forbidden to anyone other than Moslems?
3. It is forbidden by the Koran just to make or to worship the image?
Yes, Philippe, the moose-limbs ARE indeed reinforcing a stereotype that they object to.
Just be careful that you don't fall into the classic French response, and that is:
:1. Placate
2. Supplicate
3. Capitulate
and
4. Abdicate.
Just loaded up on some Danish Ham and Carlsberg beer. Will buy some Danish Butter cookies tomorrow!
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