Mohammad cartoon row sparks backlash

Syrians shout during a sit-in protest in front of the Danish embassy in Damascus. The posters in the background read "boycott Danish brands. Picture / Reuters

PARIS - An international row over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad has gathered pace as more European dailies printed controversial Danish caricatures and Muslims increased pressure to stop them.

A dozen Palestinian gunmen surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology for the cartoons, one of which shows Islam's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.

Afghanistan condemned the publication of the caricatures and about 400 Islamic school students set fire to French and Danish flags in protest in the city of Multan in central Pakistan.

The owner of France Soir, a Paris daily that reprinted the cartoons on Wednesday along with a German paper, sacked its managing editor to show "a strong sign of respect for the beliefs and intimate convictions of every individual".

But the tabloid defended its right to print the cartoons, first published last September in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.

Le Temps in Geneva and Budapest's Magyar Hirlap ran another offending cartoon showing an imam telling suicide bombers to stop because Heaven had run out of virgins to reward them.

Several European publications, such as Spain's ABC newspaper and Periodico de Catalunya, showed photographs of papers which had published the cartoons. Other European dailies including France's Le Monde printed cartoons mocking the row.

Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran joined the criticism of the cartoons, which have provoked widespread protests and boycotts against Denmark.

"Muslims should display firm reaction to such disgraceful acts," state television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in a telephone conversation with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Mubarak said freedom of the press, cited by European media and politicians, should not be an excuse for insulting religions.

Many Arab commentators said the European defence rang hollow because, they said, European media protected Judaism and Israel from criticism.

Some called for punishment of the offenders but others said Arabs had more important things to mobilise against, such as the presence of US military bases in the region.

"The least we have to do is boycott those who offended us by not buying their products," said influential Muslim cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi. "We thought it was only Denmark and Norway ... but several European countries and newspapers started re-printing these extremely offending pictures."

WESTERN FREE SPEECH VERSUS TABOOS IN ISLAM?

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the issue had gone beyond a row between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and now centred on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam, which is now the second religion in many European countries.

"We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work," Rasmussen told the Copenhagen daily Politiken. "One can safely say it is now an even bigger issue."

Rasmussen's office said he and Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller had summoned foreign envoys in Copenhagen for a Friday meeting to discuss the outcry and the government's response.

Denmark's ambassador in Paris met leaders of French Muslims, who have threatened legal action. The ambassador handed over a letter of regret from Rasmussen, written in Arabic, and an apology from the director of Jyllands-Posten.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble both defended press freedom, but Douste-Blazy called for restraint and Schaeuble said the press must "deal with what it has got into".

European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner also urged restraint after talks in Brussels with Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul-Rahman al-Attiyah, who criticised the cartoons.

"We are ... a society that likes tolerance and I think it has to be in our understanding that we have a sensitivity for other religious communities," Ferrero-Waldner told reporters.

Danish companies have reported sales falling in the Middle East after protests against the cartoons in the Arab world and calls for boycotts. Morocco and Tunisia confiscated Wednesday's France Soir, which is widely distributed in North Africa.

In the Gulf state of Qatar, the Carrefour supermarket said it had stopped selling products from Denmark.

The Islamic Society of Finland said Muslims there had joined the boycott of Danish goods to protest against the cartoons.

CRITICISM MOUNTS

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said Riyadh considered the cartoons an insult to Mohammad and all Muslims. "We hope that religious centres like the Vatican will clarify their opinion in this respect," he told the state news agency SPA.

Afghanistan said publication of the caricatures would give ammunition to those seeking to disrupt international relations.

"Any insult to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) is an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.

In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon's Shi'ite Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against writer Salman Rushdie been carried out.

The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Muslims in 1989 to kill Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam in his book "The Satanic Verses". Rushdie went into hiding and was never attacked.

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Mohammad, and Syria have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.

- REUTERS