Iran summoned the Danish ambassador to Tehran in protest over the reprinting of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by leading Danish newspapers, state TV reported yesterday.
The report said that during a meeting between Foreign Ministry officials and the Danish envoy, the Iranian side strongly condemned Wednesday's reprint and demanded the Danish government take a "serious approach" to the case and prevent its recurrence.
Leading Danish newspapers reprinted what was arguably the most controversial of the 12 Mohammed cartoons that enraged Muslims in early 2006 when they appeared in a range of Western newspapers and sparked deadly riots across the Muslim world. The reprint came as a gesture of solidarity after police revealed a plot to kill the creator of the caricature.
The drawing, by newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, depicts Islam's prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable.
Three people -- two Tunisians and a Danish citizen of Moroccan origin -- were arrested on Tuesday in western Denmark for plotting to kill Westergaard.
"We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend," said the Copenhagen-based Berlingske Tidende.
At least three European newspapers -- in Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain -- also reprinted the cartoon as part of their coverage of the Danish arrests.
In Denmark, all eyes turned to the Islamic Faith Community, a network of Muslim groups that many Danes say provoked the riots of 2006 by embarking on a Middle East tour seeking support for their fight against the paper that first published the cartoons, Jyllands-Posten.
Group spokesman Kasem Ahmad said even though printing the cartoons "was like a knife in our hearts," the group would not take any action this time.
"We have no plans to travel abroad or export this problem," he told reporters at a mosque in Copenhagen on Wednesday.
"Now we have decided to neglect and ignore any possible provocation," he said.
Other European Muslim groups agreed.
"I just don't want go through this again," said Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim educational group in London.
Shafiq said he had already written a protest letter to the Danish ambassador in London.
Some critics claimed the Danish papers were using the arrests as an excuse to provoke Muslims.
The British Muslim Initiative, a group devoted to fighting what it calls Islamophobia worldwide, said the republication showed the West's double standards.
Meanwhile, the Danish suspect in the Westergaard case was released on Tuesday after questioning, his lawyer said.
Danish intelligence service chief Jakob Scharf has indicated the man could still face charges of violating a Danish terror law.
The two Tunisians are to be expelled from Denmark because they are considered threats to national security, Scharf said.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
RSS