The publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has caused deep divisions across the world. For some, they are a transient form of entertaiment, for others, an attack on Islam. No-one knows what the Prophet Muhammad looked like. Images of him that can be found today were produced within a few hundred years of his death in the 7th Century. These tend to be exalted representations of a...
Newspapers across Europe and now even in Jordan have published political cartoons mocking Mohammed as a suicide bomber (his turban is a bomb with a lit fuse). The Muslim "street" has responded with the usual vitriol of violent protests. However, the cartoon is a legitimate criticism. No religion should be free from criticism. When we see Muslims beheading innocent people and blowing themselves and...
TO the West it may seem like a massive over-reaction by Muslims to a run-of-the-mill satirical cartoon. But even for Muslims like me who are seen by the Islamic hardliners as too liberal or even too "integrated" this is a step too far. When an ink drawing of the Prophet Mohammed was published by a Danish newspaper I wasn't amused. Partly because it wasn't that funny, but mostly because by now I...
The controversy that erupted after a Danish publication carried a cartoon humiliating the Prophet Muhammed is turning into a major provocation that threatens to unleash the much-feared clash of civilizations. Christians may be used at poking fun at their own beliefs, at the Christian Church or even at the Prophet Jesus, but this is unacceptable in the Muslim world where religious values are too...
Modern society rests on the contest of ideas, the ability to question perceived wisdom and to challenge authority, The Dominion Post writes in an editorial. Without that contest, and the right to free speech that makes it possible, societies stultify and become entrenched in their beliefs. That freedom to question and to challenge must include the right to be offensive, to affront people's most...
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for calm in a row over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that has seen protests erupt across the Muslim world. Mr Annan said he shared the distress of Muslims upset by the cartoons but urged them to accept an apology from the Danish paper that first published them. The paper's editor has told the BBC his intention was to show Muslims they were not exempt...
A FRONT-page cartoon in Wednesday’s France Soir, one of the papers that has outraged Muslim opinion by reproducing the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, shows a sulking Mohammed sitting in a cloud being consoled by God: "Stop whingeing Mohammed, we’ve all been caricatured up here," says God, as deities from other religions look on. Such humour is unlikely to cut much ice with the...
No newspaper in this country has published the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad in ways that have angered many Muslims across the world. The Guardian believes uncompromisingly in freedom of expression, but not in any duty to gratuitously offend. It would be senselessly provocative to reproduce a set of images, of no intrinsic value, which pander to the worst prejudices about Muslims...
It began innocuously enough. Last year the Danish writer Kare Bluitgen had been searching for someone who could illustrate his children's book about the life of the prophet Muhammad. It soon became clear, however, that nobody wanted the job, through fear of antagonising Muslim feelings about images of Muhammad. One artist turned down the commission on the grounds that he didn't want to suffer the...
TWELVE Danish cartoonists whose pictures sparked such outcry have gone into hiding under round-the-clock protection, fearing for their lives. The cartoonists, many of whom had reservations about the pictures, have been shocked by how the affair has escalated into a global "clash of civilisations". They have since tried, unsuccessfully, to stop them being reprinted. A spokesman for the cartoonists...
