TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's best-selling newspaper on Tuesday defended its competition for cartoons about the Holocaust, saying it was a test of the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries. The Hamshahri newspaper contest, which has been strongly condemned by Jewish organizations and Western governments, follows widespread ire in the Islamic world over caricatures published in the...
A Gallup poll shows 61 percent of U.S. respondents say the European publications that printed controversial Muslim cartoons acted irresponsibly. The telephone poll of 1,000 people Thursday through Sunday found 29 percent said the newspapers and magazine had made a responsible decision in printing the cartoons that satirize the Prophet Mohammed. Ten percent had no opinion. However, not only the...
KUALA LUMPUR: Muslim protests across the world condemning cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) are driven by fears Islam is under attack, and by the fact that it is easier to protest than to battle tough social issues, moderate Muslims say. From disputes over wearing headscarves to desecration of the Quran, many Muslims worry over what they see as onslaughts of the West, but rooting out poverty...
DUBAI: The controversy surrounding cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in several European newspapers could disrupt free trade negotiations between the European Union and the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, reports said on Monday. The Gulf News quoted a Saudi official involved in the talks as saying a final free trade agreement was due to be signed in December 2005 but had...
A popular Arab television talk show is taking a group of young people to Denmark in an effort to channel Muslim anger over the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed into more constructive dialogue. The presenter and producer of Yalla Chabab, a show on the Saudi-backed MBC channel that tries to highlight success stories in the Arab world, are planning to take young Arabs to visit Jyllands-Posten, the...
CAIRO, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- The European Union is debating ideas and measures that might be endorsed by the United Nations to bar the slandering of religions. EU foreign policy and security commissioner Javier Solana said after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Tuesday the EU and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) "are considering certain ideas to safeguard and protect...
RIYADH, Feb 14 (Reuters) - In the anonymous world of the Internet, Saudi bloggers are attacking the government for its perceived role in stirring up Muslims around the world over cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammad. Offering opinions mainly in English that no one would dare express in the state-controlled Saudi media, they accuse the U.S.-allied authorities of exploiting the cartoons months...
Iran, Syria and other governments that failed to protect foreign embassies from mobs protesting over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed should pay for the damage, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. The cartoons' publication in a Danish newspaper have triggered widespread protests across the Muslim world including violent attacks on Western diplomatic offices in a number of countries. "The...
CALGARY -- As 40,000 copies of the Western Standard containing the controversial Prophet Mohammed cartoons rolled off the presses yesterday, the Calgary-based magazine's phones rang off the hook, excessive traffic crashed its website and its publisher entered the main ring of a media circus. Ezra Levant, publisher of the news and political magazine, spent the day defending his publication's...
The International Press Institute (IPI) has affirmed its support for the right of editors to have the final decision on content, while also calling on politicians to accept this principle when appealing for calm. IPI Director Johann P Fritz said, "I can fully understand that many people have been offended by the cartoons; however, there is an essential principle at stake, which goes to the core of...
