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Cartoon controversy spreads throughout muslim world { February 4 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1702104,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1702104,00.html
Cartoon controversy spreads throughout Muslim world
Cartoon row spreads
Ewen MacAskill, Sandra Laville and Luke Harding in Berlin
Saturday February 4, 2006
The Guardian
Governments across Europe, the Middle East and Asia were reluctantly sucked into the Danish cartoon row yesterday as hundreds of thousands of Muslims took to the streets to protest.
The dispute spread to London for the first time. More than 500 people, led by the extremist group al-Ghuraba, formerly al-Mujahiroun, marched to the Danish embassy in Knightsbridge carrying banners calling on Muslims to "massacre" those who insult Islam and chanting: "Britain, you will pay, 7/7 on its way."
Pakistan and Turkey condemned publication of the satirical drawings of the prophet Muhammad, originally published in a Danish newspaper. Underlining the extent of the international divide over the issue, the German government pointedly defended the right of papers across Europe to publish the cartoons, including four in Germany. But the British government, in an unusual divergence from the rest of Europe on such issues, sided with Pakistan and Turkey.
Fearful of reprisals, Germany and other European countries stepped up security at their embassies across the Middle East. The German move came after gunmen briefly kidnapped a 21-year-old German on Thursday from a hotel in Nablus. Palestinian gunmen threw a pipebomb into a French cultural centre in Gaza City in the early hours of yesterday. Later, 300 demonstrators rampaged through the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta.
The cartoons were first published in a Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, in September. The Danish government initially ignored complaints from the country's Muslims, who then took their campaign to the Middle East and Asia. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, made a belated attempt yesterday to end the row by calling in about 70 ambassadors, including those from Muslim-dominated countries. But Mona Omar Attia, the Egyptian ambassador, said she would recommend that diplomatic action against Denmark should continue.
Pakistan's parliament unanimously passed a resolution yesterday criticising the newspapers publishing the cartoons for conducting a "vicious, outrageous and provocative campaign".
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was quoted in the Turkish press saying: "Caricatures of prophet Muhammad are an attack against our spiritual values. There should be a limit of freedom of press."
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, denounced the decision to republish the cartoons, saying press freedom carried an obligation not "to be gratuitously inflammatory". Mr Straw, at a press conference in London, said that while he was committed to press freedom, "I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been insulting, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong". He praised the British press, which up to yesterday had not published the cartoons, for showing "considerable responsibility and sensitivity".
By contrast, Wolfgang Schauble, the German home minister, defended the decision by four German newspapers to publish the cartoons: "Why should the German government apologise? This is an expression of press freedom."
Today a New Zealand newspaper, the Dominion Post, became the first in that country to publish the cartoons. Its editor, Tim Pankhurst, said: "We do not want to be deliberately provocative, but neither should we allow ourselves to be intimidated."
The Foreign Office's private view is that the decisions to publish elsewhere in Europe verge on Islamophobia. Mr Straw's comments were later echoed by the US government, which described the cartoons as "offensive to the beliefs of Muslims" and criticised the European press. A US state department spokeswoman, Janelle Hironimus, said: "Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable."
Outside the Danish embassy in London, demonstrators burned the Danish flag before ripping it apart. Scuffles broke out at Hyde Park Corner, as marchers clashed with a motorcyclist who called them "extremists". He was protected by police as some demonstrators surrounded him.
Anjem Choudhary, one of the leaders of the demonstration, refused to condemn the threat of another suicide attack in London on the scale of the July 7 bombings as a result of the perceived insult to Islam. "I am not in the business of condoning or condemning," he said. "The fact is that 7/7 was brought upon the people of London and Britain by the foreign policy of Tony Blair. There is no reason why there should not be more suicide bombings in London."
Passersby stopped police officers to ask why the marchers were being allowed to carry banners threatening further suicide attacks in the city. One police officer replied: "Don't worry. We are photographing them."
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