Posted on 09/03/2007 2:40:33 PM PDT by knighthawk
CAIRO — The Sweden's Muslim Council has lodged a lawsuit against an illustrator and a local newspaper that recently published an offensive Prophet Muhammad cartoon, which has inflamed Muslims worldwide. "Our (legal) action is targeting the newspaper; the Swedish government is not party in this crisis," Sheikh Zuhri Barhamon, the Secretary General of the Muslim Association of Sweden, told IslamOnline.net Sunday, September 2, over the phone from Stockholm.
Barhamon said relevant Swedish laws do not criminalize the publication of cartoons.
"But judges could rule in our favor if they found the caption offensive or immoral," he added.
On August 18, Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published a cartoon by Swedish cartoonist But Lars Vilks, depicting Prophet Muhammad as a dog to illustrate an editorial on self-censorship and freedom of expression and religion.
Vilks said Saturday, September 1, he had no intention to apologize.
"You must be allowed to criticize religion, but I am not opposed to Islam," he told Danish agency Ritzau.
Positive
Barhamon hailed the positive stance of the government, which condemned the blasphemous cartoon all at once.
"The spokesman for the government said Sweden is standing by its Muslims (in this crisis)," he said.
Barhamon said Swedish Muslims, who make up some 500,000 of the country's nine million population, are being treated as citizens not a mere minority.
He said Swedish Muslims have remarkably displayed restraint over the crisis.
"We believe that dialogue is the one and only way to deal with crises and meet challenges," he said.
On other actions taken to respond to the daily, the Muslim activist said Muslim leaders sent strongly-worded statements and complaints to the Swedish association of journalists.
"Imams also urged Muslims after Friday prayers to collect signatures to send a petition to the newspaper, the cartoonist, police, politicians and public figures," he added.
On Friday, some 300 Muslims peacefully protested in Oerebro, a town west of Stockholm, where the Nerikes Allehanda is based.
Barhamon further said the Sweden's Muslim Council has set up an ad hoc committee to follow up the crisis and ponder the best ways to respond to the newspaper.
Mohamed Al-Khalafi, the head of the Muslim Association of Sweden, told IOL in an interview that Muslim leaders in the Scandinavian country would not internationalize the cartoon crisis.
Intelligence reports, however, have warned the government that inaction towards the offensive cartoon could trigger a massive Muslim boycott of Swedish products in the Muslim world on a scale similar to the Muslim boycott of Danish products last year, according to Hassan Moussa, the head of the Islamic Swedish Institute for Dialogue, Communication and Democracy.
In September 2005, Denmark's mass-circulation daily Jyllands-Posten printed 12 cartoons including portrayals of a man the newspaper called Prophet Muhammad, wearing a bomb-shaped turban and another showing him as a knife-wielding nomad flanked by shrouded women.
The insulting cartoons triggered a firestorm of protests across the Muslim world and strained Muslim-West ties.
The Danish government's adamancy to condemn the cartoons sparked a Muslim boycott of Danish products worldwide, costing the country's leading companies like Arla billions of dollars in a couple of months.
More Muslims have come here SINCe 9/11 than in years before. Tell me we are NOT a suicidal nation !
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