The Cartoon Row

LONDON – The violence over cartoons satirizing the prophet Muhammad has highlighted often inconsistent rules in Europe governing free speech, tolerance, and the boundaries of public expression. Muslims in particular charge that hate-speech laws are implemented unfairly. Many countries, they say, do not abide anti-Semitic outbursts, but will tolerate cartoons that to many Muslims are deeply...

A meeting aimed at easing tensions caused by the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad is to take place today. It will involve representatives from The Dominion Post, The Press, TVNZ and TV3, along with Muslim, Jewish and Christian religious leaders. Race Relations Commissioner, Joris de Bres, says he is delighted at the willingness of the two sides to get together at short notice...

THEIR anger was raw. Several New York Muslims protesting against the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad became irate when asked if the global furore was an overreaction. "Do you know the atrocities that are happening to Muslims every day?" one demanded. "In Iraq? In Pakistan? In Palestine? Muslims feel as if we are under siege." The deep offence many Muslims have taken to the cartoons is about...

WHILE some say Muslims just can't take a joke, it turns out the joke is on us. Across large swaths of the Middle East and in the West, the report card on free speech contains more F-words than the dialogue in Team America: World Police. When a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed to test whether multi-cultural Denmark was committed to freedom of expression, much of the...

AMSTERDAM, Feb 6 : Newspapers in the Netherlands, where racial tensions have deepened in recent years, have mostly refrained from publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, an apparent move to avoid protests, observers say. Unlike their European neighbours, Dutch newspapers have held back from reprinting the controversial cartoons, a decision that reflects increased Dutch sensititives...

The ongoing riots throughout the Middle East and the burnings this past weekend of Danish government offices in Damascus and Beirut in protest of newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad bear the fingerprints of "Iranian and Syrian plotting," Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt charged during an exclusive interview. He warned Syria and Iran might use the cartoon riots as a pretense to attack...

OSLO, Feb 7 (Reuters) - The head of Norway's press association, whose life has been threatened by Muslims angered by satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, said on Tuesday the right to offend others was crucial to freedom of expression. Amid spiralling unrest over the images, Per Edgar Kokkvold, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Press Association, told Reuters in an interview he was unafraid...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - The Muslim cleric blamed for instigating protests over a dozen cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad said Tuesday that he never intended for rioters to attack Danish embassies and businesses in the Middle East and that he was crying for Denmark. But Ahmed Abu-Laban, who leads a mosque in Copenhagen's Muslim neighborhood, also said Danish officials brought the crisis on...

COPENHAGEN: With its embassies under attack and its products facing boycotts, Denmark has had its hands full this week. On top of that, some Danes feel they have been let down by their Western allies as they stand under attack for a Danish newspaper's satirical cartoons about Islam. That mood lifted some Tuesday when President George W. Bush called Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who said...

MOSCOW, February 7 (RIA Novosti) - An official on Russia's Mufti Council said the organization would make every effort to prevent the violence that could erupt to protest the publication of cartoons of Mohammed in the European media. "Now, the Mufti Council is restraining the situation in Russia to prevent the kinds of developments that took place in certain countries in the past days. The...