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WE HAVE, of course, seen it all before. That the printing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad - particularly wearing a bomb for a turban - would provoke hysteria and violence across the Muslim world was entirely predictable to anyone who remembers the book-burning and fatwa that followed the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Or indeed to anyone who has followed the rise of...

5 February 2006 – Reacting attacks sparked by a furor over controversial cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today said that while he shares the distress of offended Muslims, they must not respond with violence. "The Secretary-General is alarmed by the threats and violence, including the attacks on embassies that have occurred in Syria and...

EUROPEANS hoisted the banner of press freedom last week in response to Muslim anger over a dozen Danish cartoons, some of them mocking the Prophet Muhammad. But something deeper and more complex was also at work: The fracas grew out of, and then fed, a war of polemics between Europe's anti-immigrant nationalists and the fundamentalist Muslims among its immigrants. "One extreme triggers the other,"...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- The fury over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in European papers has exposed the widening cultural divide in Europe, where many Muslims are torn between their faith and the Western values of the countries they live in. The drawings, including one of the prophet wearing a turban in the form of a bomb, offended Muslims around the world and set off angry protests...

GENEVA: There are three things we have to bear in mind about the controversy over the cartoons published in the European media depicting the Prophet Muhammad. First, it is against Islamic principles to represent in imagery not only Muhammad, but all the prophets of Islam. This is a clear prohibition. Second, in the Muslim world, we are not used to laughing at religion, our own or anybody else's...

An anti-Semitic cartoon in a Muslim paper, which depicts Israel's acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, as a hook-nosed figure wearing a giant Star of David, last night drew protests from MPs and Jewish groups. For days, Muslims across the world have been protesting about European newspapers that published drawings showing the Prophet Mohamed. One MP accused the editors of hypocrisy. Yesterday a...

BAGHDAD, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Iraq's Transport Ministry said on Sunday it had frozen contracts with Denmark and Norway in protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad published in the countries' newspapers. "This decision was taken to protest the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and we will not accept any reconstruction money from Denmark or Norway," said a spokesman on behalf of Transport...

Whether a butterfly's wing beat can cause a tornado is still a central debate of chaos theory. But it is now proven that drawings first published more than four months ago in Denmark have seeded outrage among Muslims from Gaza to Jakarta and embittered believers making their lives in Europe. An editor's decision--call it feisty or cavalier--to ask Danish cartoonists to depict the Prophet Muhammad...

The iconic image of last week was in the Gaza Strip. It was of a Palestinian gunman astride the local office of the European Union. All the diplomatic staff had fled, tipped off ahead of time. The source of the militant's ire? A series of satirical cartoons originally published in Denmark. Yes, cartoons. A Danish paper, a while back, had commissioned a set of cartoons depicting the fear that many...

Leaving the politics of it aside, the issue is a fairly straight forward one. It is simply about values. The Danes who published the cartoons ridiculing the Prophet of my faith, degrading and attacking my religion also claim they merely exercised their right of expression-of freedom of speech. Then there were others in Europe who rose to the defense of the Danish act of insulting the prophet. They...