Posted on 02/25/2006 11:15:17 AM PST by aomagrat
Two student newspapers at Clemson University have reprinted the controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, upsetting Muslim students on campus and drawing a rebuke from the school’s president.
The papers, the conservative Tiger Town Observer and the liberal Clemson Forum, are not funded by the school, but the Observer has an on-campus office.
In an open letter e-mailed to Clemson students and staff, president James Barker said he was disappointed that the papers printed the cartoons, which were first published in a Danish newspaper and have sparked deadly riots around the world.
“While I wholeheartedly support freedom of the press and the right of student media to operate independently of administrative oversight and censorship, student journalists must understand that with rights come responsibilities, including the responsibility to be respectful of different faiths and beliefs,” Barker wrote.
The letter said the cartoons were published in both papers Friday.
Mehmet Babacan, a student from Turkey who is president of Clemson’s Muslim Student Association, called the cartoons “disturbing.”
“I just can’t understand, what’s their aim?” he said. “Certainly it’s not going to help our community at all to understand each other.”
He said the group planned to issue a formal statement.
Muslims believe any image of Muhammad is sacrilegious. One of six cartoons published in the Observer depicts the prophet with a bomb in his turban.
Andrew Davis, editor of the Tiger Town Observer, said the staff agreed unanimously to publish the cartoons because the mainstream media’s refusal to print them meant most of the public had not seen the drawings at the center of the controversy.
“We feel it is our duty as journalists to disseminate information to the public,” said Davis, a senior political science major from Surfside Beach.
Davis said both papers publish monthly. “This is our first issue since this whole fiasco has begun,” he said.
Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association, said he is aware of only one other newspaper in the state that published any of the cartoons: the Columbia City Paper, a seven-month-old, locally owned weekly.
That paper’s publisher, Paul Blake, said he felt the paper had a responsibility to print one of the cartoons to illustrate a column on the topic.
See my tagline.
I sure hope so (grin.)
SC ping!
“Certainly it’s not going to help our community at all to understand each other.”
Since when do Muslims have a genuine interest in understanding Americans?
If the Mohammedans attack Clemson students over cartoons, they will continue to prove what mindless and intolerant pigs they are.
Does it ever reach the point, Mr. Barker, when a faith is unworthy of respect?
The two papers both published the cartoons independently and simultaneously ?
Make for a nice weekend.
Au contraire, mon ami. It should becoming more clear to them that we understand them perfectly. Further, that they will understand us more clearly as well.
Certainly it will.
It might just start that "dialog" that academics are always swooning over.
'Certainly it’s not going to help our community at all to understand each other.”
FALSE!
Muhammad has been pictured down the ages in song and in fable....his image is everywhere.
I'll be coming down for a *visit*.
Please add me to your SC ping list....I'm a sandlapper...
It's upchuck's list, not mine, but I'll ping him to your request.
Clemson is a great town and a nice campus. It has a far more equitable balance of convservative and liberal views than most college campus. When both points of view are allowed equal access, guess which one comes out on top?
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