The Cartoon Row

On Friday the centre-left French newspaper Liberation printed two of the controversial Danish cartoons, describing them as "exhibits in the case". While criticising the caricatures as mediocre, the newspaper said its decision had been taken out of a concern to reaffirm values which were being damaged in France. "Liberation defends the freedom of expression," was the headline over the cartoons, one...

The Mohammed cartoons affair has triggered a debate in Switzerland over press freedom and respect for religious sensitivities. While Swiss Muslims have reacted with dismay to the publication of the controversial caricatures, the head of the Swiss Press Council, Peter Studer, says the rights of the press must be protected. The controversial images originated in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten paper and...

Wellington newspaper The Dominion Post will publish one of the Danish cartoons which have triggered strife overseas because they caricature the Prophet Mohammad. A number of European newspapers have published the images, first published by a Danish newspaper in September. The cartoons were reprinted earlier this month in a Christian magazine in Norway, and on Wednesday were published by French...

JAKARTA, Indonesia More than 150 hardline Muslims stormed into a high-rise building housing the Danish Embassy on Friday to protest the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, then tore down and burned the country's white and red flag. The rowdy protest was one of the first in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, against the 12 cartoons that first appeared in a Danish...

Denmark, best known for its liberal welfare society, Lego, Carlsberg and voting no to EU treaties, has suddenly become the unlikely epicentre of an escalating conflict between the Western and Muslim worlds. An outcry over a themed page last September on self-censorship and freedom of speech in Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s biggest newspaper, featuring 12 cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, has this week...

SAN FRANCISCO--Why are some Western commentators casting the controversy over the Danish cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad as a challenge to freedom of expression and of the press? They should instead view the controversy as a challenge to journalists to renew their sense of respect for different cultures and religious beliefs. A series of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad provoked protests...

When it comes to matters of free speech and sound journalism, it's getting increasingly difficult to determine who is worse: the present rulers of the United States or the Islamo-fascists they're now at war with. When they're not busy attacking one another, each side in the current conflict keeps busy attacking journalists (more already dead in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam era), journalism and...

Diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners are leaving the West Bank and Gaza Strip as cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that were published in several European newspapers sparked outrage in the Muslim world. Palestinian gunmen burst into a West Bank hotel and abducted a 21-year-old German teacher in Nablus on Thursday evening, and Gaza militants surrounded European headquarters in the Strip. But...

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Flemish newspapers on Friday printed a series of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, including those published in a Danish newspaper that have sparked outrage across the Muslim world. Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet, to prevent idolatry. "Right for Satire," said a front-page headline in Het Nieuwsblad. An editorial in the newspaper called the outcry over...

A leading British imam has urged Muslims in the UK to look to their own behaviour and see if they are following the Prophet’s commandments in their own lives before lashing out against the controversial cartoons. Imam Ibrahim Mogra, a preacher in Leicester and a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that British Muslims were "upset, distraught and angry" about the repeated...