Word: prophet
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...proven that drawings first published more than four months ago in Denmark have seeded outrage among Muslims from Gaza to Jakarta and embittered believers making their lives in Europe. An editor's decision--call it feisty or cavalier--to ask Danish cartoonists to depict the Prophet Muhammad has provoked a volcanic reaction, from a Muslim boycott of Danish goods to the torching of two European embassies in Damascus to death threats and lawsuits against newspapers, and even to a new slogan in the streets of U.S.-bashing Iran: "Death to Denmark...
...seems to offer proof not only of chaos theory but also of Emily Post's dictum that you ought not to talk about religion--or to be prepared for anything if you do. To Muslims, the drawings were blasphemy, a violation of a cultural protocol not to portray the Prophet. The range of reactions to the cartoon's publication among Muslims and non-Muslims alike served as a reminder of the gaping divide that still exists between the West and much of the Islamic world. In a show of solidarity for their journalistic brethren in Denmark, television stations and newspapers...
...other occasions the U.S. media have exercised self-censorship in matters of religion; in 1992, for instance, after Sinead O'Connor outraged Catholics by ripping up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, NBC reran the show without O'Connor's performance. To Muslims, disrespect for the Prophet is a rallying point beyond worldly politics. And so as anger plays out in Muslim hearts, the challenge for the West in the days ahead is to figure out how to contain...
...politically incorrect, and also inaccurate, to use the loaded phrase "clash of civilizations" to describe big stuff like the war in Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the burgeoning international conflict over a series of cartoons in a provincial Danish newspaper caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad seems to fit the term with depressing accuracy. It's a case of the hard-fought right to free expression banging up against Muslims' conviction that states ought to punish anyone who insults the Prophet. And so far, all the protagonists appear ready to ride their principles to Armageddon...
...When they first appeared last September, the images-one of which shows Muhammad's turban transformed into a bomb-caused only a minor kerfuffle. Finding any artistic representation of the Prophet inappropriate, and that some of these images conveyed disrespect against him and against Islam as a religion, Arab ambassadors in Copenhagen quickly demanded meetings last autumn with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He demurred, making the bulletproof argument that government doesn't control the free press. But it has broken out with new and somewhat mysterious force since a Norwegian periodical reprinted the cartoons on January 10. Arab...