The Cartoon Row

Jason Burke in Paris, Luke Harding in Berlin, Alex Duval Smith in Copenhagen and Peter Beaumont in Ramallah If the consequences are global, the source is almost farcically local. You reach number 3 Grondals Street by taking the number 9 bus to the outskirts of the Danish city of Aarhus and getting off by the red post box half way up the hill. The modest single-story yellow brick building is the...

Damascus, Syria (AHN) - Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday - the most violent in days of furious protests by Muslims in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Violent demonstrations are taking place in Jordan as well. In Gaza, Palestinians marched through the streets, storming European buildings and...

IT WAS always intended to generate a debate about freedom of speech but, buried innocuously in the culture section of a newspaper, no-one guessed it would spark global protests, the burning of effigies and the unlikely cry of "Death to Denmark". The subject matter, admittedly, was contentious, involving a writer's struggle to find an illustrator for his book about the Koran, and in particular the...

WE HAVE, of course, seen it all before. That the printing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad - particularly wearing a bomb for a turban - would provoke hysteria and violence across the Muslim world was entirely predictable to anyone who remembers the book-burning and fatwa that followed the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Or indeed to anyone who has followed the rise of...

EUROPEANS hoisted the banner of press freedom last week in response to Muslim anger over a dozen Danish cartoons, some of them mocking the Prophet Muhammad. But something deeper and more complex was also at work: The fracas grew out of, and then fed, a war of polemics between Europe's anti-immigrant nationalists and the fundamentalist Muslims among its immigrants. "One extreme triggers the other,"...

5 February 2006 – Reacting attacks sparked by a furor over controversial cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today said that while he shares the distress of offended Muslims, they must not respond with violence. "The Secretary-General is alarmed by the threats and violence, including the attacks on embassies that have occurred in Syria and...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- The fury over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in European papers has exposed the widening cultural divide in Europe, where many Muslims are torn between their faith and the Western values of the countries they live in. The drawings, including one of the prophet wearing a turban in the form of a bomb, offended Muslims around the world and set off angry protests...

GENEVA: There are three things we have to bear in mind about the controversy over the cartoons published in the European media depicting the Prophet Muhammad. First, it is against Islamic principles to represent in imagery not only Muhammad, but all the prophets of Islam. This is a clear prohibition. Second, in the Muslim world, we are not used to laughing at religion, our own or anybody else's...

BAGHDAD, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Iraq's Transport Ministry said on Sunday it had frozen contracts with Denmark and Norway in protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad published in the countries' newspapers. "This decision was taken to protest the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and we will not accept any reconstruction money from Denmark or Norway," said a spokesman on behalf of Transport...

An anti-Semitic cartoon in a Muslim paper, which depicts Israel's acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, as a hook-nosed figure wearing a giant Star of David, last night drew protests from MPs and Jewish groups. For days, Muslims across the world have been protesting about European newspapers that published drawings showing the Prophet Mohamed. One MP accused the editors of hypocrisy. Yesterday a...