A student newspaper at the University of Toronto will not be pressured into pulling a cartoon from their website of the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus kissing despite demands from the Students' Administrative Council and the Muslim Students' Association, its editor says.
"The cartoon is a sort of Canadian statement on religious tolerance," said Nick Ragaz, managing editor of The Strand, the student newspaper of Victoria University at U of T. "This is not an act of hate," he said. "It's controversial, yes, but it's no attack," said Ragaz.
"We will not be pulling the issues from the stands or withdrawing the cartoon from our website," said Ragaz, who has received a demand from the Students' Administrative Council (SAC) to do so. "We hope, and this is our intention in publishing the cartoon, to provoke reasoned considerate debate and dialogue about these issues both on campus and, I guess now, off campus," said Ragaz.
The Strand is being supported by the president of Victoria University and the Victoria University student council.
"The editorial in this issue of The Strand provokes and invites discussion, not intolerance," Paul Gooch, president of Victoria University, wrote in an online statement published on the U of T website yesterday.
The Strand editorial cartoon, "however offensive to some members of our community, could not be characterized as a violation of the Human Rights Code, the Criminal Code, or the applicable University policies at Vic or U of T," wrote Gooch.
"The decision to print the cartoon was carefully considered in an effort to advocate tolerance," Brian Clow, president of the Victoria University Students' Association that represents 4,000 U of T undergrad students, said yesterday in a press release.
The Strand cartoon appeared last Wednesday next to an editorial "addressing the debate about whether to publish the Danish cartoons and the cartoon in question," said Ragaz.
The satirical Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last fall have incited violence in some parts of the world.
The Strand editorial staff debated long and hard for a week before they published the cartoon, Ragaz said. "The question was whether it was a contribution worth making," he said.
"We will certainly be addressing this in our next issue and will make every attempt to address the many views that have been put forward, publishing all of the correspondence we've received," said Ragaz.
The cartoon, depicting Jesus and Muhammad kissing on a tunnel of love carnival ride under the words "Tunnel of Tolerance," explores religious tolerance and same-sex issues, Ragaz said.
But the Students' Administrative Council at Canada's largest university doesn't see it that way. They have received numerous complaints from the Muslim Students' Association, said SAC president Paul Bretscher in a press release yesterday.
"The Strand has abdicated its ethical responsibility in purposely ridiculing both Muslims and Christians on campus," wrote student Bretscher, 23.
The cartoon had been commissioned for The Varsity, U of T's student newspaper, as a comment on the Danish cartoons. But The Varsity rejected the cartoon after debating the issue with editorial staff, said editor-in-chief Graham Scott, 24.
"I didn't personally find it offensive but there are an awful lot of people who would," he said.
"Apart from the same sex thing, it's the encouragement of portraying the Prophet in a demeaning way," said Walied Khogali, 22, a member of the Muslim Students' Association.
In a letter sent to members Friday, the association called The Strand cartoon "gravely offensive."
