The Cartoon Row

NOW is the time for all good men to come to the aid of political cartoonists. Not this time for the ones losing newspaper jobs, but those whose lives are literally on the line thanks to outraged Islamists offering a bounty for their heads. The cartoonists in question are a dozen Danish artists who drew Muhammad-themed cartoons last September for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten during an...

The Star today defended its decision to publish a controversial cartoon which has offended Muslims across the world. The Dublin-based tabloid is the latest media organisation to show the drawing of prophet Mohammed, which is among a group of cartoons which have sparked unrest in the Middle East. The BBC, Channel 4 and ITV – as well as several European newspapers – have re-run the cartoons...

A Jakarta-based newspaper was criticized by hundreds of protesters on Friday for showing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad originally published by a Danish newspaper. About 200 members of the Islam Defender Front (FPI), a radical Muslim group reputable for vandalizing nightspots, gathered in front of the office of the Rakyat Merdeka (independent people) newspaper to vent anger over the...

NEW YORK: As a collection of controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad circulates online and through some European publications, prompting numerous acts of violence abroad, nearly all U.S. newspapers have chosen not to publish the cartoons. Although most American papers have covered the issue, with many running Page One stories, most contend the cartoons are too offensive to run, and...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Allah or Jehovah or God or Providence evidently has a playful and penetrating sense of coincidence. We might have called it a sense of humor, but for the seriousness of the extraordinary row that has erupted between Islam and much of the European media over the decision to run the Mohammed cartoons. These 12 cartoons that first ran in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten...

As the row over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has intensified, media executives - in television, print and online - have faced some difficult decisions. Should they publish the pictures and risk offending Muslim readers and viewers? Or by not showing them, would they be preventing the public from coming to informed opinions about the controversy? Many people have rung or called the BBC...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington on Friday condemned caricatures in European newspapers of the Prophet Mohammad, siding with Muslims who are outraged that the publications put press freedom over respect for religion. By inserting itself into a dispute that has become a lightning rod for anti-European sentiment across the Muslim world, the United States could help its own battered image among...

One of the few certainties in the world of journalism and editorial policy is that the age old tension between freedom of expression, freedom of speech and the right to robust and occasionally rude debate will, from time to time, come into conflict with the sensibilities of those who feel insulted or abused and minorities who can feel oppressed by the slights, real or imagined, of the majority...

LONDON (Reuters) - Writers who fought long and hard for freedom of expression argued on Friday that the uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad showed how easily art could be hijacked by politics and religion, with dangerous consequences. While some criticised the caricatures that first appeared in a Danish newspaper and have since been reproduced by some European media, they also repeated...

Palestinian gunmen burst into a West Bank hotel and whisked away a young German teacher, and Gaza militants surrounded European headquarters there, as Muslim outrage of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad spread from Pakistan all the way to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The West Bank kidnapping Thursday evening was short-lived. Within an hour, Palestinian police nabbed the gunmen and freed the...