World: French mag posts a new Mohammed cover along with the 12 cartoons.
| French Muslim organizations tried to prevent Charlie Hebdo reprinting the 12 cartoons, which were first published by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten, but a court rejected their suit on Tuesday on a technicality.
President Jacques Chirac condemned "overt provocations" which could enflame passions, but did not name Charlie Hebdo in his latest appeal for restraint in a dispute that has triggered violent protests across the Muslim world.
Charlie Hebdo carried the new cartoon on its front page, depicting the Prophet Mohammad burying his face in his hands and saying: "It's hard to be loved by fools."
Sales of the weekly were brisk in Paris. Inside pages showed the 12 cartoons that were first printed in Denmark and included an editorial explaining the decision to reprint them.
"It is unacceptable that religious groups are setting down the rules for the rights of the press and freedom of expression. It is not up to religious groups to decide what to publish or not -- we would be back in 1938 if we accepted this," Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val told Reuters.
"We are not the ones lighting the fire with these cartoons. The fire was lit on September 11 (2001) and by people who are using religion abusively to commit mass crimes as in London or in Madrid," he said referring to bombings in the two capitals.
As well as publishing the Danish cartoons, Charlie Hebdo printed other cartoons on its back page which caricatured other religions including Christianity and Judaism.
Sources at Charlie Hebdo said some staff had been placed under police protection and journalists at the paper said it had received three or four threatening phone calls this morning. |
you can see the cartoons here at
Nouvelabs.
New Zealand MP says watch the pandering and
sucking up.
| Prime Minister Helen Clark has called the publication "ill-judged and gratuitous".
Trade Minister Phil Goff yesterday met Jordan's ambassador in an attempt to minimise any damage to trade relations with the Middle East.
But McCully said the Government was in danger of "pandering" to countries such as Iran and Jordan.
"There is a fine line between asking people to have respect for other cultures and asking them to pander to other cultures, and I think we need to be very careful about where we draw that line," he said.
"My own view is that we need to uphold the right of the New Zealand media to make their own editorial decisions and to ask them to show restraint and be responsible, but we should be consistent about the yardstick we ask them to use."
McCully's view differs from that of his leader, Don Brash, who said this week that the publication of the cartoons was irresponsible, insensitive and in bad taste. |
In the UK, some sense an opportunity for censoring
to their needs.
| Mr Saddiqi said they had concluded they wanted the Race Relations Act modified to give Muslims the same protection as Sikhs or Jews.
He also said the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct should be tightened to prevent publishing of any images of Muhammad, but added the clerics accepted criticism and discussion of Islam should be allowed.
He said the code was a voluntary code to ensure the media treated people with respect and called for that respect to be shown to Muslims, whose religion forbids any pictorial depiction of Muhammad.
Mr Saddiqi said: "That act in itself is deeply offensive, it's akin to someone standing up in your face and abusing your mum, your sister, your dad, and it's akin to a deliberate act of provocation."
He said Muslims could accept a one-off publication of such an image as a misjudgement and said this was why it took several months for anger at the cartoons, first published in October, to gain momentum.
But he said other media organisations continuing to show the cartoons knew they were causing offence.
He said: "It happens once, it happens twice but a third time you are going to take action.
"Enough is enough, we have to get back to being a civil society.
"What kicks can you get out of seeing this caricature, except to insult the Prophet of Islam?"
He praised the UK media for not publishing the cartoons. |
At least the Flee Street press gets a pat on the head for being cowards.
Gerard Baker of Times Online nails the behavior of the US and UK press on refusing to publish
the cartoons.
| "....When it comes to religion, the American media preach the same creed, but practise somewhat differently. Not unreasonably, some would say. Attacking or ridiculing someone for what they believe is obviously less objectionable than attacking them for what they are.
This is true, but then why the double-standards? Why yes to Piss Christ and Elephant Dung Mary, but no to bomb-turbanned Mohammed? Why are so many American media companies happily making money from the Da Vinci Code, whose predicate, in case you're one of the twelve people who haven't read it, is that the Catholic Church was founded on a lie about the divinity and teachings of Christ, a lie that has been enforced through the centuries by murder, torture, and war?
Some have suggested it is about the power of fear and the limitations of cowardice. Angry nuns and irritated members of Opus Dei don't burn down newspaper offices. Some Moslems just might. There may be something to this but it surely doesn't go far enough.
Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that in America Christianity is still the powerful, majority religion, and that attacking or undermining majorities is, in some ways , an essential and even a noble aspect of democratic discourse.
Perhaps.
But I think the main explanation is simply that this is another aspect of the steady corruption and alienation of many of those in positions of power and influence in the media in America - and Britain. People who have succumbed, in varying degrees, to the self-loathing that is ready to challenge, attack and ridicule anything its own society has traditionally held dear, while defending, exonerating and praising anything that challenges it - however noxious that may be. |
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