Muhammad cartoons bring protests, firings

PARIS — Muslims erupted in angry protest and issued threats against Europeans on Thursday in response to Western media's publication of controversial caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.

Debate over the drawings has come to be seen as a collision between freedom of expression and religious sensitivities in European nations where the Muslim population has struggled to fit in.

First published by a Danish newspaper in September, the caricatures appeared recently in newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and even Jordan.

Muslims, who believe any depiction of God and the prophets is blasphemy, are outraged at drawings of Muhammad with a bomb as a turban, among others.

One cartoon shows Muhammad standing on a cloud as he tells a group of suicide bombers that Paradise has run out of the virgins that are said to await martyrs upon their death.

Conflict heated up on multiple fronts Thursday. In the Gaza Strip, masked Palestinian gunmen fired weapons into the air as they surrounded an office of the European Union and a French cultural center. Two Palestinian militant groups threatened to retaliate against the offending publications by kidnapping European citizens and targeting churches and European offices.

Palestinian gunmen briefly kidnapped a German citizen and protesters in Pakistan chanted "death to France" and "death to Denmark." Gunmen burst into several hotels and apartments in the West Bank in search of foreigners to take hostage.

Protests spread to Indonesia today, with Islamic hard-liners hurling eggs at a Jakarta building housing the Danish Embassy, barging in past security and burning the country's flag.

In Paris, the France Soir tabloid abruptly fired its managing editor for reprinting the caricatures in Wednesday's edition, which carried on its cover the paper's own cartoon of Muhammad beside Christian, Jewish and Buddhist holy figures. "Don't complain, Muhammad, we're all being caricatured here," the Christian God says.

Tunisia and Morocco banned the sale of France Soir.

Editorialists, political leaders and advocates of media freedom said that a Muslim backlash that has included boycotts, death threats and flag-burnings jeopardizes democratic rights.

"The reaction in Muslim countries shocks me because it confirms the weight that radical Islam has acquired," said Patrick Chappatte, a cartoonist quoted in Le Temps newspaper in Switzerland. "A real totalitarianism is at work in the world and [it] wants to impose its views not only on Arab Muslims, but on the West."

But Muslim leaders accused European media of provoking strife by humiliating Islam.

"Freedom of expression cannot be the freedom to lie," said Dalil Boubakeur, the imam of the Mosque of Paris and president of the French Muslim Council. "The prophet did not found a terrorist religion, but on the contrary a religion of peace."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the furor exacerbated religious tension. "Any insult to the Holy Prophet — Peace Be Upon Him — is an insult to more than a billion Muslims," a statement from Karzai said.

Western leaders responded gingerly. They were mindful that the explosive issue could unleash violence reminiscent of the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was killed in 2004 by a Dutch Muslim extremist angered over his depictions of Islam.

Some political figures called for restraint on the part of the media. The press has to "deal with what it has gotten into," said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations said the press must respect religion.

Annan "is concerned over the controversy that has been created by the publication of the Danish cartoons," said U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric. "He 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."

But many European leaders said democratic principles outweighed the risk of offending religious sensitivities.

"We must defend freedom of expression," French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said. "And if I had to choose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure."

Sarkozy said he was surprised by the firing of the managing editor of France Soir, Jacques LeFranc. The firing was ordered by the newspaper's owner, an Egyptian-born Catholic named Raymond Lakah, and announced in a news release along with an apology "to the Muslim community and anyone who was shocked or angered."

In contrast, Thursday's edition of France Soir devoted its front pages to a feisty defense of its earlier publication of the caricatures. The cover showed a photo of bearded Muslim men burning a Danish flag.

The fired editor warned that he would fight his dismissal. Le Monde, the influential French daily, published an editorial Thursday asserting that French law permits religions to be "freely analyzed, criticized and even subjected to ridicule."

The Jordanian newspaper Shihan took the step Thursday of running some of the drawings, saying it wanted to show its readers how offensive the cartoons were but also urging the world's Muslims to "be reasonable." Its editorial noted that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had apologized, "but for some reason, nobody in the Muslim world wants to hear the apology."

Hours later, the Jordanian government threatened legal action against Shihan, and the owners of the weekly said they had fired its chief editor, Jihad al-Momani, and withdrawn the issue from sale.

Accusations of intolerance on both sides demonstrate Europe's difficulties absorbing a fast-growing Muslim community that is experiencing a surge of fundamentalism and struggling with alienation and discrimination.

The case also shows differences regarding the relationship among the state, religion and the media. Arab leaders have demanded European governments sanction the journalists they regard as blasphemers. Leaders in Denmark and other countries say censorship is unacceptable and insist they cannot be held responsible for what appears in the media.

The 12 caricatures were first published in Jyllands-Posten in September, leading to months of wrangling between the Danish and Arab governments. The editors of the newspaper have said they are sorry if anyone was offended, but defend the publication of the images.

On Thursday, Danish Prime Minister Andres Fogh Rasmussen told an Arab TV network he had summoned foreign diplomats to a meeting today aimed at calming tensions: "We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work."

Los Angeles Times reporters Maggie Farley, Laura King and Christian Retzlaff contributed to this report, which was supplemented by The Associated Press.