BERLIN: Even as Muslim rage continues over Danish cartoons that satirized the Prophet Muhammad, another cartoon, in a German newspaper, likening Iranian soccer players to suicide bombers has provoked anger in Iran and an official demand for an apology.
The cartoon, published last Friday in Der Tagesspiegel, depicts Iranian soccer players with bombs strapped to their waists standing next to a group of German soccer players in the uniforms of the German Army, or Bundeswehr. The caption reads: "Why the Bundeswehr absolutely has to be deployed at the World Cup."
Editors at the paper and the cartoonist, Klaus Stuttmann, said the cartoon was intended as a commentary on an ongoing debate in Germany about whether the army should be used as a security force when the World Cup is held here this summer. It was not, they said, intended as a satire on Iran or even as a comment on suicide bombing.
But earlier this week, the Iranian Embassy in Berlin demanded that the paper apologize for the cartoon. On Tuesday, demonstrators in Tehran threw firebombs at the German Embassy, prompting a call for protection of its diplomats.
An Iranian sports newspaper, 90, called the cartoon shameless, adding, "It is now clear that the Germans are influenced by the Zionists and that they have degraded themselves."
In an interview Tuesday in Der Tagesspiegel, Stuttmann said he had received hundreds of threatening e-mails from around the world, including some death threats, and had moved out of his apartment as a security precaution.
The Iranian protests, though much smaller than the ones provoked throughout the Muslim world by the cartoons depicting Muhammad have been seen in Germany as another instance in which Muslim anger has become a threat to freedom of expression.
"This caricaturist is traumatized for the rest of his life, and this is a success of the fanatical Islamic world," Giovanni di Lorenzo, a member of the board of directors for Der Tagesspiegel, said in a telephone interview Thursday. "It was not his best caricature, no doubt about it, but he is afraid for his life."
Editors at Der Tagesspiegel, in a front-page commentary Wednesday, said they regretted Iran's reaction to the cartoon, but they have not apologized for it.
"The cartoon is within the range of this country's freedom of opinion," the editors' comment said.
In an earlier commentary, the paper's editor, Gerd Appenzeller, wrote, "The absurdity of the situation is obvious." Nobody thinks that Iranian athletes are going to show up with bombs on them, he said, any more than German soccer players would come in army uniforms.
"The illustrator makes that clear," he said.
Efforts to reach both Stuttmann and Appenzeller were unsuccessful, but in the interview in Der Tagesspiegel, Stuttmann said he had meant no offense to Islam and would not produce drawings like those of Muhammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
Separately, a Pakistani cleric offered a 1.5 million rupee, or $25,000, reward and a car for anyone who kills the cartoonist who drew Muhammad, The Associated Press reported Friday.
