Posted on 08/31/2007 5:59:09 AM PDT by IrishMike
Marking the beginning of yet another dispute over free speech and religious sensitivity, the government of Pakistan has joined Iran in protesting the publication in a Swedish newspaper of a sketch featuring the head of Mohammed on the body of a dog.
"Pakistan condemns, in the strongest terms, the publication of an offensive and blasphemous sketch of the Holy Prophet in the Swedish newspaper," the foreign ministry in Islamabad said in a statement Thursday.
A Swedish diplomat was summoned to the ministry and "was told that the publication of the sketch had caused grave affront to the religious sentiments of Muslims," it said.
"Regrettably, the tendency among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims in the world is on the rise," the statement said.
A Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman told Sweden's English-language The Local that the diplomat had apologized for any hurt feelings the publication may have caused.
The government in Stockholm has distanced itself from the decision by a regional newspaper, Nerikes Allehanda, to publish the picture on August 18. The sketch, by artist Lars Vilks, was used to illustrate an editorial on freedom of expression.
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A few months after a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September 2005 published a dozen caricatures of Mohammed, simmering anger among Muslims erupted.
The cartoons, later reproduced in other European newspapers, triggered death threats, diplomatic strains, a Mideast boycott of Danish products, and protests -- some of them deadly -- in a number of Islamic countries.
The ripple effects of the episode are still being felt, with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a 57-member bloc of Islamic states, working to have international institutions outlaw the "defamation of prophets" and combat "Islamophobia."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Finally...I almost feared they grew accustomed to it.
How do they know what Mo-ham-et looked like?.........
where’s the cartoon???
I'm thinking that number would be a lot lower of the punishment for conversion in every Muslim nation wasn't death, or worse.
The little girls must have drawn pictures.
Mohammed?! Mohammed?!! That’s what I call my johnson.
Thanks for the link.
I don’t know how anyone could tell that was a dog, much less Muhammad.
If the Muslim community cracked down on extremism, or not promote it as is the case with Saudi Arabia and Iran, there would be no need to draw such cartoons.
Publish a cartoon insulting Mohammed, the demoniac pedophile.
Wait for riots, then kill the rioters until they are all dead or fled. Spot the leaders and tag ‘em for future assassination.
Repeat.
Pretty soon you’ll run out of belligerent Muslims.
This is an insult to all dogs!!!
My dog, Lola is protesting!!!Demanding that they take this offensive cartoon down immediately!
Look at the way he’s looking at the other guy. Do you think he’s tapping his foot at him?
The disgusting images of Jesus, namely, Christ on the the Cross, sitting in a jar of urine, are PAID for by taxpayers and called "art." We Christians say and do nothing and the blasphemy continues.
If Jesus' head were to be put on to the body of a dog, it would pass the "art" test here, or be labeled political humor or simply "freedom of expression" in a newsrag op ed page and those who objected, if any, would be excoriated. The blasphemy gets steadily worse and Christian reaction grows weaker.
I wonder why we wonder how Muslims can get suicide bombers to give up their lives for their faith. They seem more serious about their faith than we Western Christians.
Maybe I'm wrong here. I could be. I apologize if I offend with my remarks.
I lived in Saudi Arabia for five years and saw their faith and fervor. It made me wish that we Christians still had some of it. We have it, to some extent, at the grass roots level but our leaders, political, social, artistic and educational, have NONE. But, then we elect them "leaders" so what does that say about US?
Some people would argue that Mohammed was a pedophile because of his 6-year-old wife, while others would argue against the proposition that Mohammed was a pedophile by saying that he waited until she was 9 before consummating the marriage. I myself am not going to comment on whether I think Mohammed was a pedophile!
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