Kofi Annan
© AFP/FilePARIS (AFP) - As if to underline the gravity the row has taken on, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was moved to speak out Thursday with a plea for calm.
First published in Denmark in September and later picked up by a dozen publications across Europe, the caricatures -- including one depicting Mohammed with a turban-shaped bomb on his head -- have provoked a firestorm of indignation in the Islamic world, with boycotts of Danish goods being observed in some countries, especially Gulf states.
A few extremist Islamic groups such at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have threatened retaliation against citizens from the countries in which the cartoons appeared.
Some European publications have apologized for giving offense. But they have at the same time adamantly defended their right to express opinions on any subject, whether in editorials or political cartoons.
"The issue is not just the caricatures that appeared in a Danish newspaper, but the fundamental values of European democracy," Fleming Rose, a journalist at the daily Jyllands-Posten that first printed the cartoons, wrote Thursday in the Czech daily Lidove Noviny.
View of the offices of France Soir in Paris
© AFP Jean AyissiBut invoking the bedrock Western principle of a free and open press has done little to calm ire in the Muslim world, where religion often trumps competing secular values, commentaries from the region suggest.
"We do not understand the logic of Danish authorities who refuse to apologize, invoking 'freedom of expression', when they know that there are millions of Muslims ready to defend the honor or their religion and their prophet," said the head of Lebanon's fundamentalist Hezbollah movement, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, according to Lebanese press reports Thursday.
Other commentators suggest that free speech was simply a pretext for expressing a deep-seated animosity against Islam.
"It is not a question of freedom of opinion or belief, it is a conspiracy against Islam and Muslims which has been in the works for years," opined the editor-in-chief of Egypt's Al-Gomhurriya newspaper on Thursday. "The international community should understand that any attack against our prophet will not go unpunished," he said.
In Doha, Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi who is head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, called on Muslims all over the world to observe "an international day of anger for God and his prophet" on Friday.
Even moderate Muslims who recognize the principle of an independent media remained sharply critical of the cartoons. "One has the right to express oneself on Islam through words, but by using caricatures, one is not criticizing but rather provoking and injuring," commented David Munir, Sheikh of the main mosque in Lisbon.
A Syrian Muslim man holds up a poster featuring logos of Danish products during a protest
© AFP Louai BesharaIslam categorically proscribes the depiction in images of the Prophet Mohammed.
Western commentators and editors recalled on Thursday, however, that one of the fundamental purposes of open commentary was to provoke reaction.
"Muslims should tolerate satire in the same way that Christians and Jews do," said Volker Beck, head of the Green bloc in the German parliament.
The French daily France Soir, which came under fire after publishing the offending cartoons under the front-page headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God," made the same point on Thursday by reprinting controversial caricatures of Christ.
"Can you imagine a society that added up all the prohibitions of the different religions? What would remain of the freedom to think, to speak, or even to come and go freely?" an accompanying editorial said.
France Soir was the object of several outraged editorials Thursday, including one from the Attajdid newspaper in Rabat, Morocco. "The newspaper should be punished and compelled to apologize, otherwise the relations between France and Arab states risks deteriorating on all fronts," it read.
Also Thursday, the UN chief tried to cool tempers.
Annan "believes that the freedom of the press should always be exercised in a way that fully respects the religious beliefs and tenets of all religions," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
"The secretary general also believes in the importance of overcoming misunderstandings and animosities between people of different beliefs and cultural traditions through peaceful dialogue and mutual respect."
EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson was less even-handed as he lashed newspapers for "throwing petrol on to the flames" and being "provocative".
On behalf of the European Union Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik "clearly condemned the statements and activities which denigrate a religion in an offensive way."
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