Free Republic

TEHRAN, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Dozens of people pelted the Danish embassy in Tehran with stones and climbed over walls into the mission's compound on Tuesday in a second successive day of violent protests over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad. A Reuters cameraman at the scene said about 20 protesters had managed to climb into the compound where a tree appeared to have been set ablaze. It was not clear whether they had entered the embassy building itself.

The Cartoon War began innocently enough. Kare Bluitgen, a Danish writer of childrens' books, complained he couldn't find anyone to illustrate the book he was writing about the Prophet Mohammed. The Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten invited cartoonists to offer their own interpretations. A dozen accepted. Jyllands Posten published their work last Sept. 30th. Extreme Muslim sects, such as the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, regard any depiction of Mohammed as blasphemy. (The Koran prohibits only "idolatry," and throughout the last millenium Muslim artists have painted likenesses of the Prophet.) Radical Muslims in Denmark issued death threats, and the cartoonists went into...