2005-2014

Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad I decided to publish in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every...

LINXIA: China Religion is often hidden in China, so the unabashed public display of Islam here in the city known as Little Mecca is particularly striking. Men have beards and wear white caps. Women wear head scarves. Minarets poke up from large mosques. A bookstore sells Korans and religious study guides in Arabic. These are reminders that with almost 21 million followers of Islam, China has...

ISLAMABAD, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Police fired teargas and rubber bullets to break up a banned protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in Islamabad on Sunday and Denmark said its ambassador to Pakistan had returned home for security reasons. The government banned the demonstration after similar protests in Pakistan turned violent, with at least five people killed in the past week. The...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- A joint Spanish-Turkish initiative backed by the United Nations is being mentioned as a possible forum for restoring calm between Europe and the Islamic world following the Mohammed cartoon debacle originally triggered by Denmark. This is the Alliance for Civilization, first mentioned in the context of the cartoon crisis by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan last week...

What if the world went up in a mushroom cloud over a cartoon -- or because of a photograph of some reveler dressed up like a pig? Well, of course, that would be absurd, a comedy, a Clouseauean flick about a bumbling inspector, right? No, that would be a documentary about the end of civilization circa 2006 -- unless we come to our senses. The cartoon implosion now rocking the Muslim world --...

History will tell it as a story of cartoons, a case of satire aimed at Muslims and the Prophet Mohammad. Cartoons so offensive that, four months after their publication in a Danish newspaper, they sparked off enraged protests around the Islamic world unleashing a fury of violence against the blasphemous, godless and desecrating West. Calling up the phantoms of religious wars and racial conflicts...

MUCH has been said and done in response to the deliberately offensive anti-Muslim cartoons published late last year by a conservative Danish newspaper, and profusely printed in many Europeans and non-European media, including South Africa, Jordan and Malaysia. While the prevalent narrative in the mainstream Western media has treacherously defended the essentially Western emphasis on freedom of...

JEDDAH, 18 February 2006 – Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is contacting member states for an emergency meeting of their foreign ministers shortly to discuss major issues including the repercussions of the sacrilegious Danish cartoons. Ihsanoglu has already spoken to Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Yemeni Foreign Minister...

A minister in the Uttar Pradesh government has announced a bounty of Rs 51 crore (about $11.5 million) to anyone who beheads the Danish cartoonists "who dared to make the caricature of the Prophet". The Minister of State for Haj and Minorities Welfare, Hazi Yakoob Qureshi, also Friday told a 25,000-strong crowd of protestors in Meerut, that the assassin would get gold equivalent to his weight

A journalist was seriously injured Friday when policemen assaulted him at Kakopathar, the scene of violent clashes last week that left nine people dead, according to Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). The journalist, Robin Dhekial Phukan, a correspondent with daily Asomiya Pratidin, had gone to the area to cover a visit by Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. YOUNG NOT SPARED: A young girl being brought to...