International

KABUL Afghanistan; 7 February 2006 -- Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan were attacked by an angry crowd today as protests against controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad continued across Asia. Norway's Defense Ministry said Norwegian troops with the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, used tear gas to disperse some 300 stone-throwing protesters outside their base in the city of...

A Scotland Yard special squad is investigating extremists who protested against Muslim cartoons over the last week. The investigation began as it emerged that a man who dressed as a suicide bomber during the protests had served a prison sentence for drug dealing. Omar Khayam, 22, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2002 for possessing crack cocaine with intent to supply, according to newspaper...

LEAVING the politics of it aside, the issue is a fairly straightforward 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 defence of the Danish act of insulting Prophet Muhammad...

Danish politicians are disappointed with the lack of EU support in the country's current crisis over cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. With embassies and flags on fire, a Middle East boycott of Danish goods and Danish citizens on the run, there is growing disappointment with the EU for its lack of support for the country at the centre of the conflict. At a meeting in the Danish parliament's...

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan police killed four protesters on Tuesday in some of the worst violence to erupt over satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which have provoked a deepening crisis between Europe and the Muslim world. Fresh protests erupted in the Middle East, Asia and Africa on Tuesday over the cartoons as leaders urged restraint and struggled to contain the protests, some of which in...

Maybe you remember, back in 1989, the controversy over Piss Christ, a piece of art by the now fashionable artist Andres Serrano. He himself had been living on a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his brave break-out work (a crucifix immersed in urine) was hung in various public museums and was debated and mostly defended by the high culture elites until it became part of the...

The Danish government was to brief parliament today on the attacks on Danish diplomatic missions during protests over a newspaper’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller were to meet with the Foreign Policy Committee in the afternoon. Fogh Rasmussen and Moeller then planned to hold a joint news conference. The Danish embassies...

The Danish prime minister has urged Muslims to refrain from violence, saying the Prophet Muhammad cartoon row is being exploited by extremists. "We need to resolve this issue through dialogue, not violence," Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference. He condemned the attacks on Danish embassies by Muslim protesters angered by the satirical cartoons which first appeared in a Danish newspaper....

NEW YORK A day before the Philadelphia Inquirer published one of the controversial cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, which drew protesters to the paper, the Austin American-Statesman ran one of the images, but reportedly received reader support for its efforts. Editor Rich Oppel said he published a cartoon in last Friday's edition depicting Muhammad with a turban similar to a bomb. He said...

The Philadelphia Inquirer became the first major American newspaper to publish any of the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on Saturday, prompting a small protest outside the newspaper's offices yesterday morning. About two dozen demonstrators, holding signs reading "No to Hate" and "Peaceful Protest for Religious Tolerance," dispersed after about an hour. The organizers said they would be back...