The controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed took a violent turn at the weekend as radical forces in the Middle East sought to exploit it to score political gains. A day after the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus were set on fire by mobs, radicals in Lebanon broke a security barrier and fought teargas and water cannons to set fire to the Danish...
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Lebanon's judiciary began interrogating 200 rioters who wrecked havoc in a Christian Beirut neighborhood during a protest against slandering Islam. Security sources said 77 Syrians, 42 Palestinians believed to belong to the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command, 25 stateless Bedouins and 38 Lebanese Muslim Sunni...
Denmark's troops in Iraq have gone on a charm offensive to explain that they respect the Prophet Mohammed, as one insurgent group called on followers to capture Danish soldiers and "cut them into as many pieces as the number of newspapers that printed the cartoons". The Islamic Army in Iraq also named France, Holland, Norway and Spain - where last week newspapers published the cartoons - as...
Syrian protesters who burnt and looted the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus at the weekend were encouraged to organise by the Syrian authorities, and received text messages from Islamic study centres urging them to gather, according to participants in the riot. "The sheikhs told us to send five text messages to every true Muslim we knew urging them to participate," said a student from...
The controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers has unfortunately, but predictably, led us to a debate between free speech versus religious (Muslim) taboos. Some have even, by way of extension and convenience, framed this debate in terms of Samuel Huntington's proposition of a "Clash of Civilizations" between the West and the Islamic world...
By Paivi Munter in Stockholm, Annukka Oksanen in Copenhagen and,Roula Khalaf in London Nordic countries last night feared that attacks on their foreign missions could spread across the Middle East after demonstrators burned down the Danish consulate in Beirut in protest at the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The incident followed attacks in Damascus, Syria's capital, on Saturday by...
Outraged Muslims on Monday demanded an Australian newspaper apologize after it published one of a series of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have sparked angry protests around the world. The News Corp.-owned Courier-Mail, the biggest newspaper in the Queensland state capital Brisbane, apparently became the first newspaper in Australia to publish one of the Danish caricatures on Saturday...
For centuries, English law has been crammed full of legal powers to arrest people who threaten violence or murder in public, or who go around terrifying ordinary people. On Friday, dozens of prima facie examples of such offences were committed during protests against Danish cartoons which offended Muslims by depicting the prophet Muhammad. One man was dressed in the garb of a suicide bomber...
BEIRUT – Thousands of Muslims rioted in downtown Beirut on Sunday, setting fire to the Danish Consulate, attacking a prominent Maronite Catholic church and smashing car and shop windows in protest against the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in Western newspapers. The pandemonium took a sectarian turn as demonstrators cut an angry path through a predominantly Christian neighborhood...
The Conservatives last night called on the police to arrest militant Muslims who threatened Westerners with violence during protests in London over newspaper cartoons that mocked the Prophet Mohammed. As fanatics - some dressed as suicide bombers - staged more protests yesterday, David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the police should take action against what were clearly offences of...
