Tension Rises Over Cartoons of Muhammad

Palestinian militants stand on a gate outside the European Union's building in Gaza City, which was closed after threats that staff members would be kidnapped. (Adel Hana - AP)

Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ahmadinejad of Iran issued statements of condemnation, as did King Abdullah of Jordan. In a speech in Washington, the monarch said that while "we respect and revere freedom of speech, we condemn needless desecration and injury of Islamic sensibilities, such as the recent cartoons misrepresenting and vilifying my ancestor, the prophet."

Newspapers throughout the Muslim world condemned their European counterparts. Bahrain's Gulf Daily News ran a one-word headline on its front page that summarized sentiment in the region: "Apologize!"

The Egyptian publisher of France Soir, which printed the controversial caricatures Wednesday, fired the paper's managing editor, Jacques LeFranc, late Wednesday night, saying, "We present our regrets to the Muslim community and to all people who have been shocked or made indignant by this publication."

But the dismissed editor's boss, Faubert, wrote an unrepentant editorial in Thursday's editions: "We had no desire to add oil to the fire as some may think. A fundamental principle of democracy and secularism is being threatened."

But critics argued that publishers should be more discerning in the battles they choose over freedom of expression. "This is the sort of thing that will feed into al Qaeda, alienating and angering a lot of educated young people," Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan's Daily Times and Friday Times, said in a telephone interview from Lahore.

Sethi and others see a double standard at work. "People who question some of the facts of the Holocaust are ostracized; most publishers are so sensitive they won't even get into the argument," Sethi said. "A degree of censorship is imposed that is not articulated in this case."

International journalist organizations have condemned the threats of violence against the European journalists who published the cartoons.

"We defend unpopular speech around the world all the time," said Joel Simon, deputy director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "We don't make judgments whether we agree or disagree" with the message. "Sometimes we sort of have to hold our nose, but they've got the right to say that, and we defend their right."

Europe has roughly 15 million Muslims, who in some countries make up more than 10 percent of the population. Many analysts see growing social divisions between the Muslims and the majority populations of the countries, which are historically Christian but are increasingly secular in outlook.

Tensions continue in the Netherlands, where in 2004 Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose work carried strong anti-Islamic messages, was assassinated by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Muslim extremist. In a court appearance Thursday in that city, Bouyeri said that "the fact that you see me as the black standard-bearer of Islam in Europe fills me with honor, pride and joy."

Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament who has proposed a law that would ban women from wearing burqas in the Netherlands and has been the target of death threats, posted the cartoons on his Web site Thursday under this explanation: "What is the price of freedom? As a token of support to the Danish cartoonists and to stand up for free speech, we will place their drawings here."

The controversy, which has inflamed the Middle Eastern press and Islamic organizations, began when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons in September. The newspaper's editors had asked 12 artists to draw their depictions of Muhammad after an author had complained that he could not find an artist willing, under his or her own name, to illustrate a book about the prophet.