Muslim condemnation of the European media campaign to reprint controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed spread on Thursday, with leaders warning the controversy could play into the hands of extremists.
President Hosni Mubarak said the reprinting of the cartoons originally published by Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, they were reproduced this week in newspapers across Europe would lead to serious repercussions, inflaming sentiment in the Muslim world and among European Muslim communities. Insensitive handling of the issue, he said, would give more pretexts to extremists and terrorists to carry out attacks.
In Saudi Arabia, Prince Nayef, the interior minister and staunch conservative, said the cartoons were an insult to all Muslims, and suggested the Vatican should intervene to put an end to the spread of the cartoons.
Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey, a European Union candidate country, deemed the cartoons an "attack on our spiritual values", and called for a limit on press freedom.
Images of the prophet are considered blasphemous by Muslims so depicting Mohammed as a bomber, as in one of the original cartoons, was certain to spark an uproar. The row has also erupted at a very sensitive time in Muslim relations with the west. Five years after the attacks of September 11 and the launch of the "war against terror", many Muslim Arabs still feel that their religion, rather the minority terrorists in their midst, is under attack.
Concerns over terrorism have also caused tensions within European society, where Muslims are the fastest growing minority. There were some exceptions on Thursday to the otherwise widespread indignation, however.
Jordanian independent tabloid al-Shihan reprinted three of the cartoons on Thursday, saying people should know what they were protesting about, AFP news agency reported. "Muslims of the world be reasonable," wrote editor Jihad Momani. "What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"
On the streets of Cairo, some people acknowledged that the region had far more serious problems to worry about and indeed protest against. But as Abdulfattah, a 23-year-old commerce graduate from Cairo University, said: "Although it’s a tiny issue compared to the other issues we are facing in the region like the US aggression in Iraq, this is something people feel they can do something about and protest about. It’s their way of venting their anger."
The decision to reprint the Danish cartoons, which were first published in September, appeared to be a deliberate attempt to challenge what several European newspapers see as fundamentalist pressure. Some newspapers also pointed out that there is no outrage when Jews are ridiculed in cartoons.
"Enough lessons from these reactionary bigots! Just because the Koran bans images of Mohammad doesn’t mean non-Muslims have to submit to this," said Serge Faubert, editor of France Soir, the French newspaper which reprinted the cartoons on Wednesday.
