International

ALGIERS, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Two thousand Algerian Islamists staged a sit-in protest on Monday against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, a rare demonstration in a country still traumatised by a decade-long civil war. "Mohammad's army will be back," demonstrators chanted repeatedly during the 2-1/2 hour protest in a gymnasium in the centre of the capital, Algiers. Protesters burnt Danish and U.S...

Muslim demonstrators clashed with security forces who fired live rounds and tear gas to break up violent protests in several Asian countries on Monday against the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Two demonstrators were shot to death and three other people, including two police officials, were injured in the central Afghan city of Mihtarlam, when police reportedly fired on...

PETALING JAYA: A Sarawak newspaper is in trouble for reproducing a controversial cartoon that insulted Islam, which has sparked condemnation and massive protests in the Muslim world. The Sarawak Tribune's editor-on-duty Lester Melanyi has resigned after a caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist appeared on Page 12 of the paper on Saturday. The Tribune published a "notification" on...

CAIRO, February 6, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – Romanian Muslims are fighting the Danish cartoons that mocked Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in their own way, launching a campaign to get the Romanians acquainted with the merits of the prophet of Islam and his noble characteristics. "Romanian Muslims will distribute nationwide thousands of pamphlets and handouts among the Romanians on the life of Prophet...

Confused by the wave of protests, threats, boycotts, and attacks against diplomatic facilities that have shaken their idyllic tranquility after the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed on Jyllands-Posten, the Danes are asking themselves questions. They wonder if an attack will take place in their country, as threatened by various jihadi groups, and if freedom of speech is in...

The controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed took a violent turn at the weekend as radical forces in the Middle East sought to exploit it to score political gains. A day after the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus were set on fire by mobs, radicals in Lebanon broke a security barrier and fought teargas and water cannons to set fire to the Danish...

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Lebanon's judiciary began interrogating 200 rioters who wrecked havoc in a Christian Beirut neighborhood during a protest against slandering Islam. Security sources said 77 Syrians, 42 Palestinians believed to belong to the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command, 25 stateless Bedouins and 38 Lebanese Muslim Sunni...

Denmark's troops in Iraq have gone on a charm offensive to explain that they respect the Prophet Mohammed, as one insurgent group called on followers to capture Danish soldiers and "cut them into as many pieces as the number of newspapers that printed the cartoons". The Islamic Army in Iraq also named France, Holland, Norway and Spain - where last week newspapers published the cartoons - as...

Syrian protesters who burnt and looted the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus at the weekend were encouraged to organise by the Syrian authorities, and received text messages from Islamic study centres urging them to gather, according to participants in the riot. "The sheikhs told us to send five text messages to every true Muslim we knew urging them to participate," said a student from...

The controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers has unfortunately, but predictably, led us to a debate between free speech versus religious (Muslim) taboos. Some have even, by way of extension and convenience, framed this debate in terms of Samuel Huntington's proposition of a "Clash of Civilizations" between the West and the Islamic world...