The Cartoon Row

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has reprimanded one of its biggest daily newspapers for printing a cartoon lampooning the global controversy over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad. The government's move has fanned a hot debate in this mainly Muslim country about where to draw the line between press freedom and respect of religion, because this time it involves a newspaper closely aligned with...

Controversy over the publication of drawings of the Prophet Mohammed continued to grow as an international press freedom crisis on Thursday as Indian authorities imprisoned a magazine editor and Belarusian prosecutors opened a criminal probe into a weekly newspaper. In each case, the publications said they printed one or more cartoons to provide context for the worldwide furore that has now...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Muslim hackers angered by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed have defaced nearly 3,000 Danish Web sites over the past month in the biggest politically motivated cyber attack long-time observers have ever seen. Experts say that the world-wide protests over a Danish newspaper's decision to publish the caricatures, an act offensive to Muslims who regard...

SANAA, Feb 22 (Reuters) - A Yemeni editor on trial for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed said he had done so to show Muslims how insulting they were, not to deride Islam. Now Mohammad al-Asaadi, editor-in-chief of the English daily Yemen Observer, says Islamists could kill him for his action. "The problem now is not the trial," he told Reuters on Wednesday from a cage in a Sanaa...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- One of the toughest battles facing America and Europe in the war on terrorism is the campaign to convince Muslims around that world that the West is not really engaged in a war on Islam. The cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad carried in newspapers in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe have made the battle a lot harder to win. While newspapers that have published the...

AMMAN: In a direct challenge to the international uproar over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, the Jordanian journalist Jihad Momani wrote: "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?" An editor in Yemen, Muhammad al...

MINSK, 22 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has condemned the decision of an independent Minsk publication to reprint controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. "Zhoda," a weekly, reprinted the cartoons on 17 February to illustrate an article about the deadly protests sparked by the images across the Muslim world. The Foreign Ministry said the publication was "clearly...

NEW DELHI: The editor of a magazine here was arrested on Wednesday for publishing the caricatures of Prophet Mohammed. Police said the newly launched magazine "Senior India" had carried the caricatures in an edition that hit the stands on January 15. Editor Alok Tomar was initially called to a police station for questioning and later arrested when he admitted to publishing the caricatures. "We...

BRATISLAVA (Slovakia): No one burned embassies and flags when a newspaper cartoonist poked fun at a Supreme Court judge in Slovakia. But a recent court ruling against one of Bratislava's top dailies exposed the risks of satirising through editorial cartoons. On a day when Muslims around the world were protesting Danish newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, a Slovak regional court slapped...

The European Union is seeking to get candidate country Turkey actively involved as mediator in the Mohammed cartoon conflict, which has sharpened tensions between Europe and the muslim world. The current Austrian EU presidency has invited Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul to present ideas on how to soothe relations at an informal so-called "Gymnich" meeting in Salzburg next month. "The Turkish...