LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
FEBRUARY 10/2006

Below News from Miscellaneous sources for 10.2.06
A Muslim Call From Europe For Faith in Civility-Forwad 10.2.06
Jewish Canadians, Loyal Liberals, Lose Insider Status-forward 10.2.06
Hezbollah leader in Lebanon says Bush and Rice should 'shut up'-freenewmexican 10.2.06
Iran, Syria inciting the unrest: Rice-the australiannews 10.2.06
Lebanon's internal turmoil-washingtontimes.10.2.06
Lebanon Shi'ite ceremony turns into cartoon protest-Reuters 10.2.06

Nasrallah: Bush and Rice should 'shut up'
Hizbullah leader addresses hundreds of thousands at Ashoura commemoration
By Majdoline Hatoum -Daily Star staff
Friday, February 10, 2006
BEIRUT: Heading a march by hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon on Thursday, Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said U.S. President George W. Bush and his secretary of state should "shut up" after they accused Syria and Iran of fueling protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
Addressing some half a million Shiites who turned up despite bad weather to commemorate Ashoura, Nasrallah urged Muslims around the world to keep up the protests as long as no apology has been received for the offence.
"Defending the prophet should continue all over the world. Let Condoleezza Rice and Bush and all the tyrants shut up. We are an Islamic nation that cannot be silent when they insult our prophet or our sacred beliefs."
"Today, we are defending the dignity of our prophet with a word, a demonstration but let Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to, we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices," Nasrallah said, drawing heavy applause from the crowds. Bush had urged governments Wednesday to stop the violence, including attacks on Western diplomatic missions in parts of the Muslim world. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had also accused Iran and Syria, both backers of Hizbullah facing pressure from the West, of deliberately stoking rage among Muslims.
"Efforts for compromise are being made while the offensive campaign is gathering steam and more newspapers are publishing the cartoon. There will be no compromise before we get an apology," Nasrallah said. The head of Lebanon's resistance party also said there would be no compromise until a Danish apology is served, and media laws prohibiting the insult of Muslim religious sanctities are passed around Europe. "We want European parliaments to draft laws that ban newspapers from insulting the Prophet. If they don't do this, it means they intend to go on insulting our beliefs," he said.
The demonstration, which takes place annually to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, the prophet's grandson and a Shiite religious figure, had in fact become an emotional but peaceful protest against cartoons depicting the Prophet.
Unlike a protest on Sunday that turned violent after rioters burned down the Danish Consulate building and destroyed public and private property, there were no signs of violence in the march in Beirut's southern suburb, a Hizbullah stronghold - despite the high turnout of people, estimated by Hizbullah at more than 700,000.
Some of the slogans carried in the massive crowds read "Nation of Mohammad don't accept!" in reference to the caricatures, and "What will there be after the insults?" However, Nasrallah condemned Sunday's riots, and said everyone who took part in them "must be punished."Nasrallah also saluted residents of the Christian Achrafieh neighborhood, were the riots took place, "for restraining and not retaliating."But he said that Sunday's riots should not be blamed on "outsiders."
"Not every time something like this happens do we blame someone from the outside," he said, referring to the March 14 forces' accusations against Syria. "Sunday's riots were demonstrations that went wrong, and those who did this wrong should be punished. No more, no less. Let the government take responsibility."
Nasrallah also addressed the internal political situation in the country, saying that the national dialogue, "called for by Speaker Nabih Berri should be initiated.""Whether they want it to take place inside Parliament, inside the Cabinet or over a round table gathering all Lebanese political factions, we are ready," he said.
He also criticized March 14 Forces, and accused them of "placing the country on top of a volcano.""They are the ones in power, and still, they are the instigating panic in the country," he said. "They should be more accurate in their accusations and assumptions," Nasrallah added, in reference to a statement issued by the March 14 Forces last Monday in which they claimed Jordanian and Syrian extremists were infiltrating Lebanese borders to train in north Lebanon with the help of some pro-Syrian Lebanese figures. Investigations into the claims could not establish the presence of such radical groups, acting Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat later declared. The head of Hizbullah, which just signed a pact with MP Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement - forming the country's undeclared majority - also mocked the March 14 Forces, who form Parliament's
majority, labeling it as "imaginary." "Lebanon is a country that cannot, and should not, be governed in the sense of majority and minority ... especially if its (parliamentary) majority is an imaginary and proportional one," Nasrallah said.
The Hizbullah leader also reasserted the party's commitment to defend Lebanon against Israeli aggressions, and to free the remaining Lebanese detainees in Israeli prisons.
"We are working on making this year the year to free our brothers in Israeli detention. Samir Kantar and his friends, which will in turn pave way to free our Syrian and Jordanian brothers detained in Israeli prisons," Nasrallah said.
He did not mention Lebanese detainees jailed in Syria, one of the points of agreement in Hizbullah's pact with the FPM. 
Nasrallah also called on Libya to release Imam Moussa Sadr, a Lebanese Shiite figure who disappeared in Libya during the Lebanese civil war. "Libya has only one choice, to release Imam Sadr and his companions," he said. "The recent verdict by an Italian court saying that Imam Sadr had actually entered Italian territories is a political declaration. Why did they deny his entrance 26 years ago and then change their declaration now?" Nasrallah exclaimed. "We know Italy was paid by Libya to issue this political declaration," he said. Sadr, the founder of the Amal Movement, disappeared during a trip to Libya 26 years ago. Libya claims the Imam left its territories, heading for Italy. At the time Italy rebuffed the claim.

SLA members want amnesty
TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 9 LCCC -- Former members of the South Lebanon Army, who fled to Israel after its withdrawal from Lebanon, asked for general amnesty to return home.
The spokesman for some 2,400 former Lebanese collaborators with Israel who resettled in north Israel since the latter pulled out from Lebanon in May 2000, said none are willing to return home because they fear being thrown in prison.
"We thank those inviting us to return, but we ask for a general amnesty to be issued by parliament for all Lebanese living in Israel so that they will be assured before returning home," said the spokesman, Youssed Hajj, a former SLA member, in an interview with United Press International.
Hajj was responding to a joint declaration by Hezbollah's chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Christian leader Gen. Michel Aoun, calling on the former SLA militiamen to return to Lebanon quickly.
Hajj said "the invitation is insufficient and not assuring," noting that many Lebanese who had fled to Israel and returned home later in response to pleas by the clergy were thrown in jail. "We do not want this to happen again to us." Hajj lashed out at ex-SLA chief Gen. Antoine Lahd, a former Lebanese army officer, for neglecting his former militiamen and seeking his personal interests only. "Lahd does not represent the Lebanese in Israel, in fact nobody represent us," Hajj said. "Lahd forgot us and he is living now in Tel Aviv where he is conducting a lucrative business using our money which he stole from the SLA fund," Hajj added.
The SLA, which included Lebanese from all confessions, but mainly Christian Maronites, collapsed when Israel pulled out unconditionally from south Lebanon in May 2000, largely due to Hezbollah's guerrilla warfare.

Lebanon Shi'ite ceremony turns into cartoon protest
BEIRUT (Reuters) - More than 250,000 Shi'ite Muslims transformed a religious ceremony in the Lebanese capital on Thursday into a protest against cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.
Unlike a protest on Sunday that turned into a riot in which the building housing the Danish consulate was torched, there were no signs of violence in the march in Beirut's southern suburb, a stronghold of the Hizbollah guerrilla group. "At your service, oh Mohammad, at your service, oh Prophet of God," the crowds chanted with fists raised. "Death to America, Death to Israel," they also shouted.
"No dignity to a nation whose prophet is insulted," a placard read; "What comes after insulting sacred values?" another asked.
Turnout, put by security sources at over 250,000, was high despite wind and rain. The march is an annual event to mark Ashura when Shi'ites mourn the death of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein, in Kerbala in Iraq 1,300 ago. Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged the faithful this year to take a stand against the cartoons. He was expected to address the crowds later.
Angry Muslims have demonstrated around the world over the cartoons, first published in Denmark, then Norway and several other countries in Europe and elsewhere.
The caricatures, including one showing the Prophet Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, have unleashed fury among many Muslims who consider any portrayal of their Prophet as blasphemous, let alone one showing him as a terrorist.
Protesters burnt the Danish and Norwegian missions in Damascus on Saturday. Protesters torched the Danish consulate in Beirut a day later and vandalised a church and property in a Christian neighbourhood.
Lebanon has charged 203 people, mostly Lebanese but including Syrians and Palestinians, with taking part in the riots and promised swift trials.
Ashura is the 10th day of the lunar month of Muharram, when Imam Hussein was killed in AD 680 in a battle with the army of Caliph Yazid. He was decapitated and his head taken to Damascus, the seat of Yazid's Ummayad dynasty. Reuters

Hezbollah leader in Lebanon says Bush and Rice should 'shut up'
By SAM F. GHATTAS
February 9, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - The leader of Hezbollah, heading a march by hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims Thursday, said President Bush and his secretary of state should "shut up" after they accused Syria and Iran of fueling protests over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Denmark, meanwhile, said it had temporarily closed its diplomatic mission in Beirut, which was burned by protesters Sunday, and all staff had left Lebanon. Danes feared religious processions in Muslim countries Thursday to mark the Shiite festival of Ashoura would spill over into violence against its diplomats and soldiers after days of protests over the caricatures, which were first published in a Danish newspaper in September.
About 2,000 hard-line Muslims also rallied and burned a Danish flag Thursday in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
In Beirut, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah urged Muslims worldwide to keep demonstrating until there is an apology over the drawings and Europe passes laws forbidding insults to the prophet. The head of the guerrilla group, which is backed by Iran and Syria, spoke before a mass Ashoura procession. Whipping up the crowds on the most solemn day for Shiites worldwide, Nasrallah declared: "Defending the prophet should continue all over the world. Let Condoleezza Rice and Bush and all the tyrants shut up. We are an Islamic nation that cannot tolerate, be silent or be lax when they insult our prophet and sanctities." "We will uphold the messenger of God not only by our voices but also by our blood," he told the crowds, estimated by organizers at about 700,000. Police had no final estimates but said the figure was likely to be even higher.
Speaking about the controversy for the first time on Wednesday, Bush condemned the deadly rioting sparked by the cartoons and urged foreign leaders to halt the spreading violence. Rice said Iran and Syria "have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it."Iran has rejected the U.S. accusations. Syria has not commented publicly.
In protests throughout the Muslim world, demonstrators who saw the drawings as deeply insulting to Islam have attacked embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran and rioted in Afghanistan. Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of the prophet.
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that first published the drawings, apologized last week for offending Muslims but stood by its decision to print the cartoons, citing freedom of speech. Other European publications recently reprinted the drawings, which included an image of Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped with a burning fuse, in a show of solidarity. Denmark's government has said it could not apologize over a newspaper's publication.
In Brussels, Belgium, Mohamed Ahmed Sherif, chairman of the Libyan-based World Islamic Call Society, said Muslims see the drawings as a direct attack on their values and called the decision to print them in European newspapers a "hate program."
Sherif, speaking during a visit Brussels where he met European Union officials, said the cartoons only serve to fuel extremism. "Nobody should blame the Muslims if they are unhappy about the images of the Prophet Muhammad," Sherif said. "It's forbidden to create a hate program to show that the prophet is a terrorist while he's not. Don't ask us to try to make people understand that this is not a campaign of hate."
Nasrallah, a black-turbaned, bearded cleric, demanded an apology for the cartoons and laws to prevent a repetition.
"There can be no settlement before an apology and there can be no settlement before laws are legislated by the European Parliament and the parliaments of European countries," he said.
Islamic nations should demand "a law committing the press and the media in the West that proscribes insulting our prophet. If this matter cannot be achieved that means they (West) insist on continuing this," he added.
Nasrallah said that if the controversy touched on Jews or Israel the West would have reacted differently and quickly.
In Denmark, the Danish Broadcasting Corp., or DR, said its journalists in Beirut had been warned to stay away from the Shiite Ashoura ceremonies. "It has become more difficult to be a Danish reporter in the Middle East," Lisbet Knudsen, head of DR's news desk said.
The Bangladeshi protesters _ most members of the hard-line group, Islamic Constitution Movement _ marched through the streets outside the country's main mosque in downtown Dhaka shouting, "Down with Islam's Enemies!" police said.
"We can't tolerate such disrespect to our prophet. It's a shameful act. We condemn it," A.T.M. Hemayetuddin, a movement leader, told supporters.
In the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, about 200 people turned an Islamic procession into a protest against the prophet drawings, shouting "Down with Denmark" and "Down with Israel." Senior Superintendent of Police Muneer Khan said 25 people were arrested as police beat back angry demonstrators.
Malaysia's government Thursday indefinitely shut down a local newspaper for reprinting one of the drawings.
___Associated Press reporters Julhas Alamm in Dhaka, Bangladesh; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Mujtaba Ali Ahmad in Srinigar, India and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia contributed to this report.

Iran, Syria inciting the unrest: Rice
Correspondents in Washington
February 10, 2006
THE Bush administration has condemned the violent response to European cartoons mocking Islam and accused Iran and Syria of exploiting the international controversy to incite unrest in the Middle East.
As Washington grappled with mounting anger among Muslims over publication of the caricatures in Western newspapers, President George W. Bush condemned the violence while admonishing the media to be more "thoughtful".
But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sharpened the political dimension of the controversy by charging Iran and Syria, two frequent targets of the Bush administration, with stoking sectarian feelings.
"I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes," Dr Rice said. "The world ought to call them on it." Mr Bush, meeting at the White House with Jordan's King Abdullah, said: "I call upon the governments around the word to stop the violence, to be respectful, to protect property, to protect the lives of innocent diplomats." In his first public remarks on the furore, Mr Bush said he and King Abdullah both rejected violence as a way to express discontent with the press. "We believe in a free press, and also recognise that with freedom comes responsibilities, that with freedom comes the responsibility to be thoughtful about others," Mr Bush said.
The Washington Post said the comments by Mr Bush and Dr Rice highlighted a shift in White House strategy to focusing on the killings and destruction during Muslim protests in several nations.
Administration officials told the Post that Mr Bush did not want a debate over free speech to diminish or deflect attention from the US condemnation of the violence. Mr Bush made a calculated decision to focus on the violence, according to White House aides quoted in the paper. The administration's initial reaction, delivered last Friday by the State Department, was to sharply criticise the drawings. "Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable," a State Department spokesman said at the time. But the paper said US officials considered the response too harsh and not sufficiently supportive of free speech.
Appeals for calm went largely unheeded as police shot dead four more protesters during rioting in Afghanistan, bringing the worldwide death toll to 13.
Eleven demonstrators have been killed since Friday in Afghanistan, and one each in Somalia and Lebanon.
A top Taliban commander offered a reward of 100kg of gold to anyone who killed the person responsible for the "blasphemous" cartoons, the Afghan Islamic Press reported. One of the 12 Danish cartoonists whose caricatures of Islam in the Danish paper the Jyllands-Posten led to the lethal protests has told a German newspaper he is distraught over the consequences and now faces at least two death threats.
The man, whose name was withheld, said he and the other 11 cartoonists were under police protection.
A death warning had come "straight from Mecca", naming the 12 cartoonists and the editor of the Jyllands-Posten culture pages. A further death threat had come from a youth group in Pakistan.
The man said some of the cartoonists were distressed that the pictures had been reproduced in "thousands" of newspapers and TV news pictures, which took some pressure off Jyllands-Posten but increased the danger for the artists.
The Danish paper has come under mounting pressure, at home and abroad, after publishing the drawings in September. The threats came as Jyllands-Posten editor-in-chief Carsten Juste said his newspaper "in no circumstances will publish Holocaust cartoons from an Iranian newspaper". A prominent Iranian newspaper has said it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extended the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the Mohammed caricatures. Scheduled trips within Europe for Crown Prince Frederik and Australian-born Crown Princess Mary of Denmark are going ahead this month despite ongoing security concerns about Danish targets around the world.
The drawings -- including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb -- have touched a nerve in part because Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of the prophet Mohammed for fear they could lead to idolatry. AP, AAP and agencies

Lebanon's internal turmoil
TODAY'S EDITORIAL
February 9, 2006
As Lebanon approaches the first anniversary of the Feb. 14 car bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 19 other persons, its effort to build a viable democracy is being subverted from within, thanks in large part to Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran and Damascus. The pictures of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Lebanese Christian leader Michel Aoun smiling in the wake of Tuesday's meeting -- at which Mr. Aoun recognized the terrorist group's right to bear arms so long as Israel occupies Lebanese territory (a false premise) -- are just the latest troubling sign that Lebanese politicians, Muslim and Christian alike, are making peace with the idea that Hezbollah will not be bound by the same rules as everyone else. President Emile Lahoud, a Maronite Christian, is widely discredited as a Syrian lackey. Sa'ad Hariri, chief of the Sunni Muslim-led Future Movement (the largest party in the parliament) lives outside the country, fearing that he will suffer the fate of his father.
And now, just as Hamas was permitted by the Palestinian Authority to join the political process while retaining its terrorist infrastructure and its weapons, Beirut has capitulated to Hezbollah -- a terrorist group which receives $100 million a year from Iran -- permitting it to join the Lebanese government without disarming. (All other armed groups in the country were required to disarm when the Lebanese Civil War ended in 1990.) Last week, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, an ally of Mr. Hariri, acquiesced to demands made by Amal and Hezbollah (both of them Shi'ite Muslim movements with pro-Syrian leanings) that Hezbollah be recognized as a so-called national resistance group rather than a militia. Following Mr. Siniora's formal capitulation, last Thursday, Hezbollah and Amal ended a seven-week-long boycott of the Lebanese government. This gives Hezbollah exactly what it wants: assurance that the Lebanese government will continue to defy efforts led by the Bush administration to force Beirut to fully implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 -- which calls for the disarmament of all Lebanese militias, including Hezbollah.
The day after Mr. Siniora's announcement, Hezbollah decided to flex its muscles by firing at an Israeli army post near the Lebanese border, sparking a series of new retaliatory air raids by Israel. In the coming days, with Hezbollah growing in strength and its main sponsors, Iran and Syria, both under fire from the international community (Iran over its nuclear program and Syria over the Hariri assassination), Tehran and Damascus have strong incentives to turn Lebanon into a battleground to deflect attention from their own problems.
And, short of dragging Israel in, the rejectionists have ample opportunity to sow discord inside Lebanon. Lebanese opposition groups accuse Syrian special forces of bringing non-Lebanese fighters into the country, and say Syria had a hand in encouraging Sunday's riots in Beirut, ostensibly aimed at protesting anti-Muslim cartoons. Given the weakness of Lebanon's central government, Hezbollah and its patrons have ample incentive to continue trying to use Lebanese as cannon fodder.

Muslim anger flared at summit
By Hassan M. Fattah The New York Times
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006
BEIRUT As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad. The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed "concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries" as well as over "using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions." The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance.
But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in Northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference - and the role its member governments played in the outrage - was something of a turning point.
After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.
As early as October, Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors, and Arab ambassadors lobbied Arab governments.
"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference, when the OIC took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam.
Hanafi said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction - of course they were offended - and then you had regimes taking advantage saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about."'
The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.
At first, the agitation was limited to Denmark. Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born Dane, acts as spokesman for the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, an umbrella group formed by 27 Danish Muslim organizations to press the Danish government into action over the cartoons.
Akkari said the group had worked for more than two months in Denmark without eliciting any response.
"We collected 17,000 signatures and delivered them to the office of the prime minister, we saw the minister of culture, we talked to the editor of the Jyllands-Posten, we took many steps within Denmark, but could get no action," Akkari said, referring to the newspaper that published the cartoons.
He added that the prime minister's office did not even respond to the petition.
Frustrated, he said the group had turned to the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark and asked them to speak to the prime minister on their behalf. He dismissed them too, Akkari said. "Then the case moved to a new stage," Akkari recalled. "We decided then that to be heard, it must come from influential people in the Muslim world."
The group put together a 43-page dossier on the case, including the offending cartoons and three more shocking images that had been sent to Danish Muslims who had spoken out against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.
Akkari denied that the three more offending images had contributed to the violent reaction, saying the images, received in the mail by Muslims who had complained about the cartoons, were included to show the response that Muslims got when they spoke out in Denmark.
In early December, the group's first delegation of Danish Muslims flew to Cairo, where they met with the grand mufti, Muhammad Sayid Tantawy, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League.
"After that, there was a certain response," Akkari said, adding that the Egyptian government and the Arab League both summoned the Danish ambassador to Egypt for talks.
Akkari concedes that there were misunderstandings along the way.
In Cairo, for example, the group spoke at a news conference about a proposal from Denmark's far-right Danish People's Party to ban the Koran in Denmark because of some 200 verses that allegedly encourage violence.
Several newspapers then ran articles claiming that Denmark planned to issue a censored version of the Koran. The delegation returned to Denmark, but the dossier continued to make waves in the Middle East.
Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, had taken the dossier with him to the Mecca meeting, where he showed it around. The Danish group also sent a second delegation to Lebanon to meet religious and political leaders there.
Akkari went on that trip. The delegation met with the grand mufti in Lebanon, Muhammad Rashid Kabbani, and the spiritual head of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims, Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, as well as the patriarch of the Maronite Church, Nasrallah Sfeir.
The group also appeared on Hezbollah's satellite television station, Al Manar TV, which is seen throughout the Arab world.
Akkari also made a side trip to Damascus to deliver a copy of the dossier to that country's grand mufti, Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun.
Lebanon's foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, says he agreed to meet in mid-December with Egypt's ambassador to Lebanon, who presented him with a letter from Aboul Gheit urging him to get involved in the issue. Attached to the letter were copies of some of the drawings.
At the end of December, the pace picked up as talk of a boycott became more prominent. The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, comprising more than 50 states, published on its Web site a statement condemning "the aggressive campaign waged against Islam and its Prophet" by Jyllands-Posten, and officials of the organization said member nations should impose a boycott on Denmark until an apology was offered for the drawings.
"We encourage the organization's members to boycott Denmark both economically and politically until Denmark presents an official apology for the drawings that have offended the world's Muslims," said Abdulaziz Othman al-Twaijri, the secretary general of the organization.
Within a few weeks, the Jordanian Parliament harshly condemned the cartoons, as had several other Arab governments.
On Jan. 10, as anti-Danish pressure built, a Norwegian newspaper published the caricatures in an act of solidarity with the Danes, leading many Muslims to believe that a real campaign against them had begun.
On Jan. 26, in a key move, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark, and Libya followed suit. Saudi clerics began sounding the call for a boycott, and within a day, most Danish products were pulled off supermarket shelves.
"The Saudis did this because they have to score against Islamic fundamentalists," said Said, the Cairo political scientist.
The issue of the cartoons came at a critical time in the Muslim world because of Muslim anger over the occupation of Iraq and a sense that Muslims were under siege.
Strong showings in elections by Islamists in Egypt and the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories had given new momentum to Islamic movements in the region, and many economies, especially those in the Gulf, realized their economic power as it pertained to Denmark.
The wave swept up many in the region. Sheik Muhammed Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.
"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus Christ in Christian countries.
"I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries," he recalled.
Then, he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed, and he began to feel differently.
"It started to seem that this way of thinking was an insult to us," he said. "It is fine to say, 'This is our freedom, this is our way of thinking.' But we began to believe that their freedom was something that hurts us."
Last week, Abu Zaid heard about a march being planned on the Danish Consulate in Beirut, and he decided to join. He and 600 others boarded buses bound for Beirut. Within an hour of arriving, some of the demonstrators - none of his people, he insists - became violent, and began attacking the building that housed the embassy.
It was just two days after a similar attack occurred on the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus.
"In the demonstration, I believe 99 percent of the people were good and peaceful, but I could hear people saying, 'We don't want to demonstrate peacefully; we want to burn,"' the sheik said.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Craig S. Smith from Paris; Katherine Zoepf from Beirut; Suha Maayeh from Amman; Abeer Allam from Cairo; and Massoud A. Derhally from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
BEIRUT As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.
The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed "concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries" as well as over "using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions."
The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance.
But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in Northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference - and the role its member governments played in the outrage - was something of a turning point.
After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.
As early as October, Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors, and Arab ambassadors lobbied Arab governments.
"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference, when the OIC took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam.
Hanafi said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction - of course they were offended - and then you had regimes taking advantage saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about."'
The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.
At first, the agitation was limited to Denmark. Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born Dane, acts as spokesman for the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, an umbrella group formed by 27 Danish Muslim organizations to press the Danish government into action over the cartoons.
Akkari said the group had worked for more than two months in Denmark without eliciting any response.
"We collected 17,000 signatures and delivered them to the office of the prime minister, we saw the minister of culture, we talked to the editor of the Jyllands-Posten, we took many steps within Denmark, but could get no action," Akkari said, referring to the newspaper that published the cartoons.
He added that the prime minister's office did not even respond to the petition.
Frustrated, he said the group had turned to the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark and asked them to speak to the prime minister on their behalf. He dismissed them too, Akkari said.
"Then the case moved to a new stage," Akkari recalled. "We decided then that to be heard, it must come from influential people in the Muslim world."
The group put together a 43-page dossier on the case, including the offending cartoons and three more shocking images that had been sent to Danish Muslims who had spoken out against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.
Akkari denied that the three more offending images had contributed to the violent reaction, saying the images, received in the mail by Muslims who had complained about the cartoons, were included to show the response that Muslims got when they spoke out in Denmark.
In early December, the group's first delegation of Danish Muslims flew to Cairo, where they met with the grand mufti, Muhammad Sayid Tantawy, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League.
"After that, there was a certain response," Akkari said, adding that the Egyptian government and the Arab League both summoned the Danish ambassador to Egypt for talks.
Akkari concedes that there were misunderstandings along the way.
In Cairo, for example, the group spoke at a news conference about a proposal from Denmark's far-right Danish People's Party to ban the Koran in Denmark because of some 200 verses that allegedly encourage violence.
Several newspapers then ran articles claiming that Denmark planned to issue a censored version of the Koran. The delegation returned to Denmark, but the dossier continued to make waves in the Middle East.
Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, had taken the dossier with him to the Mecca meeting, where he showed it around. The Danish group also sent a second delegation to Lebanon to meet religious and political leaders there.
Akkari went on that trip. The delegation met with the grand mufti in Lebanon, Muhammad Rashid Kabbani, and the spiritual head of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims, Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, as well as the patriarch of the Maronite Church, Nasrallah Sfeir.
The group also appeared on Hezbollah's satellite television station, Al Manar TV, which is seen throughout the Arab world.
Akkari also made a side trip to Damascus to deliver a copy of the dossier to that country's grand mufti, Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun.
Lebanon's foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, says he agreed to meet in mid-December with Egypt's ambassador to Lebanon, who presented him with a letter from Aboul Gheit urging him to get involved in the issue. Attached to the letter were copies of some of the drawings.
At the end of December, the pace picked up as talk of a boycott became more prominent. The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, comprising more than 50 states, published on its Web site a statement condemning "the aggressive campaign waged against Islam and its Prophet" by Jyllands-Posten, and officials of the organization said member nations should impose a boycott on Denmark until an apology was offered for the drawings.
"We encourage the organization's members to boycott Denmark both economically and politically until Denmark presents an official apology for the drawings that have offended the world's Muslims," said Abdulaziz Othman al-Twaijri, the secretary general of the organization.
Within a few weeks, the Jordanian Parliament harshly condemned the cartoons, as had several other Arab governments.
On Jan. 10, as anti-Danish pressure built, a Norwegian newspaper published the caricatures in an act of solidarity with the Danes, leading many Muslims to believe that a real campaign against them had begun.
On Jan. 26, in a key move, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark, and Libya followed suit. Saudi clerics began sounding the call for a boycott, and within a day, most Danish products were pulled off supermarket shelves.
"The Saudis did this because they have to score against Islamic fundamentalists," said Said, the Cairo political scientist.
The issue of the cartoons came at a critical time in the Muslim world because of Muslim anger over the occupation of Iraq and a sense that Muslims were under siege.
Strong showings in elections by Islamists in Egypt and the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories had given new momentum to Islamic movements in the region, and many economies, especially those in the Gulf, realized their economic power as it pertained to Denmark.
The wave swept up many in the region. Sheik Muhammed Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.
"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus Christ in Christian countries.
"I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries," he recalled.
Then, he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed, and he began to feel differently.
"It started to seem that this way of thinking was an insult to us," he said. "It is fine to say, 'This is our freedom, this is our way of thinking.' But we began to believe that their freedom was something that hurts us."
Last week, Abu Zaid heard about a march being planned on the Danish Consulate in Beirut, and he decided to join. He and 600 others boarded buses bound for Beirut. Within an hour of arriving, some of the demonstrators - none of his people, he insists - became violent, and began attacking the building that housed the embassy.
It was just two days after a similar attack occurred on the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus.
"In the demonstration, I believe 99 percent of the people were good and peaceful, but I could hear people saying, 'We don't want to demonstrate peacefully; we want to burn,"' the sheik said.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Craig S. Smith from Paris; Katherine Zoepf from Beirut; Suha Maayeh from Amman; Abeer Allam from Cairo; and Massoud A. Derhally from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Lebanon bishops express solidarity with Iraqi Christians
By Doreen Abi Raad
2/8/2006
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Lebanon's Maronite Catholic bishops expressed sorrow for the recent bomb attacks on Christian churches in Iraq and noted the upcoming anniversary of the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister.
Previously, even in wars people avoided "the places of worship and civilians," said the Maronite Council of Bishops in a statement following their monthly meeting Feb. 1.
Militants planted bombs that exploded near several Christian churches and the Vatican Embassy Jan. 29 in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Kirkuk. In addition to conveying their solidarity with Iraqi Christians, the bishops also remembered the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
"In a few days, Feb. 14, falls the anniversary of the assassination of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, an event that caused a painful echo in Lebanon and in many world circles," the bishops said. "We hope that the investigation into his assassination results in discovering the doers and punishing them most severely so as to deter others from committing such condemnable crimes." On Feb. 11, four Maronite bishops were scheduled to be ordained in Bkerke, the headquarters of the Maronite Catholic Church. The bishops asked the faithful to join them in prayer so that the new bishops would "be pastors according to the Lord's heart" and "ask God, by the intercession of St. Maron, whose feast we celebrate Feb. 9, to reward them and shower them with blessings." The four bishops-designate were Georges Bou-Jaoude of Tripoli, former Lazarist provincial superior; Simon Atallah of Baalbeck-Deir el-Ahmar, former Antonine superior general; Francois Eid of Cairo, Egypt, former Mariamite superior general; and Elias Nassar of Saida, former parish priest in Jezzine.
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Syria Should Not Serve Iranian 'Strategic Interests' Says Former Syrian Vice President
PRESS RELEASE - Washington, D.C., Feb. 8, 2006 - Former Vice President of Syria Abdul-Halim Khaddam told the Voice of America (VOA) in an exclusive interview that he is opposed to President Assad's policy of placing Syria in a position to serve the "strategic interests" of Iran. "I was against making Syria an instrument of Iranian policy in the Middle East," Khaddam said, "because it contradicts with Syrian traditions and history and leads to loss of independence."
Khaddam, now part of the political opposition calling for changes in Syria, told VOA's Kurdish Service that he "always had different views" when he was part of the Assad regime and that he now has a program for change.
"The basic tenets of the program are to build a democratic system in Syria that guarantees general and individual freedoms and allows power rotation based on elections results," he said. "Furthermore, that it ends the state of emergency and allows freedom of expression, releases all political prisoners, and grants the right to return to all Syrians living abroad, together with economic and administrative reforms."
Khaddam added that he is willing to cooperate with any personality or political force that shares his vision of "regime change and the establishment of a democratic system."VOA broadcasts 4 hours of radio in Kurdish every day. The programs are transmitted on shortwave as well as through AM and FM stations. All are also available live and on demand at www.VOANews.com/Kurdish. The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 100 million people. Programs are produced in 44 languages.
For more information, call the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 203-4959, or E-Mail publicaffairs@voa.gov.

U.S. says Iran, Syria incite cartoon protests
By Sue Pleming
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; 4:44 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused U.S. adversaries Iran and Syria on Wednesday of inciting Muslim anger against the West over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that have sparked deadly protests.
President George W. Bush said governments should stop the violence that has erupted over the cartoons, including attacks on Western embassies in parts of the Muslim world. At least 10 people have been killed in protests in Afghanistan alone.
"Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes and the world ought to call them on it," Rice said at a joint news conference with Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
She said nothing justified the violence that had resulted from the cartoons and appealed to governments to urge calm.
"There are governments that have used this opportunity to incite violence," she added, referring to Syria and Iran.
Rice took a more pointed jab at Iran and said it had "not even hidden its hand in this."
The United States is on a collision course with Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program and was instrumental in getting the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency last Saturday to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council.
Rice said Iran had "no alternative course" than to accept the demands of the international community over its nuclear programs. Iran denies it is building a nuclear weapon and says its program is for civilian energy use only.
Violence flared around the Muslim world after caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were first published in a Danish daily, and then reprinted across Europe. Many Muslims consider any portrayal of their Prophet as blasphemous.
Speaking to reporters later, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said protests over the cartoons in Iran and Syria were apparently sanctioned by their governments.
HOLOCAUST CONTEST
But the United States did not believe protests in other parts of the Muslim world were due to Iran and Syria inciting violence, McCormack added. An Iranian newspaper, in retaliation for the European cartoons, has launched a competition calling for cartoons about the Holocaust, a move the State Department called "outrageous" and that McCormack said was influenced by Iranian authorities. Last year Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and described the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War Two, as a myth.
Syria is under intense world scrutiny for its alleged role in last year's killing of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri and European officials have said stoking Muslim fury could be a way to warn the West of the risks of destabilizing the Syrian government.
The White House has blamed Syria for not protecting the Danish and Norwegian embassies that were torched by protesters angered by the cartoons. Bush discussed the Muslim reaction to cartoons with Jordan's King Abdullah on Wednesday and said it was "a topic that requires a lot of discussion and a lot of sensitive thought.""We believe in a free press, and also recognize that with freedom comes responsibilities. With freedom comes the responsibility to be thoughtful about others," Bush said.
But, he added: "We reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in a free press."
Abdullah condemned the cartoons, but said protests should be peaceful. "With all respect to press freedoms, obviously anything that vilifies the Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, or attacks Muslim sensibilities I believe needs to be condemned," Abdullah said. (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Saul Hudson

Islamic Violence against Freedom of Expression
H.E. Mr. Kofi Annan
Secretary-General
UN Headquarters
International Headquarters
Zelglistrasse 64
P.O. Box 70
8122 Binz, Zurich
Switzerland
Tel. (++41) 044 982 3333
Fax.(++41) 044 982 3334

First Avenue at 46th St.
New York, NY 10017
USA
February 8, 2006
Islamic Violence against Freedom of Expression
Dear Mr. Secretary-General,
Christian Solidarity International (CSI) deplores the recent use of violence and threats of violence in Islamic states, especially the continuing demonstrations for the restriction of freedom of opinion and expression regarding Islam as a religion and political ideology.
We are particularly dismayed at the murder of Catholic priest, Fr. Andrea Santoro, in the Turkish city of Trabzon by a youth shouting “Allahu akhbar”, the stoning by Muslim mobs of St. Maroun Church in Beirut, the widespread desecration of Christian symbols, the arrest in Amman of Jordanian newspaper editor Jihad Momani, and the burning of Western embassy buildings.
The role of the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing 57 Muslim states in creating a climate for violent confrontation and undermining prospects for a genuine “Dialogue of Civilizations” is a cause of deep concern.
The OIC set the stage for anti-free speech demonstrations at its extraordinary summit in Mecca in December 2005. The Muslim heads of state resolved to pressure, through a program of Joint Islamic Action, international institutions - including the UN - to criminalize insults of Islam and its prophet. The summit’s final resolution referred specifically to the satirical caricatures of Mohammed published last September in Denmark, which are now being used as a pretext for acts of violence. On the 4th of February - the day the mob violence commenced - the OIC described publication of the caricatures as acts of “blasphemy”. Blasphemy is punishable by death, according to Shariah law.
Such threats of violence have long been employed at the UN by the OIC and member states. In 1994, the Government of Sudan openly accused Special Rapporteur Gaspar Biro of blasphemy. In 1997, the same dictatorship accused CSI at the Sub-Commission of insulting and defaming Islam for revealing the enslavement of Black women and children in the context of an openly declared jihad. The OIC-related Arab League backed Khartoum in 1999 by declaring that claims of slavery in Sudan – a clear reference to CSI’s anti-slavery work – are a defamation of all Muslims throughout the world.
OIC accusations of blasphemy caused Special Rapporteur Maurice Glélé-Ahanhanzo to censor his 1997 report on religious intolerance. At the meeting of the Sub-Commission in 2004 representatives of Sudan and Pakistan leveled respectively accusations of blasphemy and defamation of Islam at an accredited NGO for quoting an Al Azhar approved school text book that legitimized beheading non-Muslim in the context of jihad. At last year’s Sub-Commission, the Pakistani Ambassador and IOC spokesman attempted to prevent the use of the adjective “Islamic” before the word “terrorism” by calling this usage “a sacrilege”.
The OIC’s understanding of freedom is officially enshrined in the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which subordinates international norms for human rights to discriminatory Shariah law. Political repression, religious discrimination and the publication of Judeophobic and Christianophobic literature are widespread phenomena within OIC member states, especially in its Arab heartland. Violations of human rights committed by OIC member are often wrapped in the protective armor of Islam.
We are gravely concerned about the OIC’s ten-year plan of Joint Islamic Action, announced at the Mecca Summit, to prevent free expression at the UN about Islam as a legal system and political ideology. This plan includes the formulation of a code of conduct for UN member states, NGOs and the media. It also includes efforts to gain UN acceptance of the discriminatory Cairo Declaration.
CSI urges you as Secretary-General to encourage OIC member states to desist from fanning the flames of religious intolerance in order to undermine freedom of expression both with and outside the UN. We also urge you not to yield to further acts of intimidation by the OIC aimed at imposing censorship at the UN and at undermining the universality of the international instruments by means of the Shariah-based Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam. Respectfully, Dr. John Eibner CEO, CSI-USA
Cc: H.E. Ms. Louise Arbour, High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Office at Geneva.

A Muslim Call From Europe For Faith in Civility
By TARIQ RAMADAN
February 10, 2006
I was in Copenhagen this past October when the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed started to provoke demonstrations in Denmark. While being interviewed by a journalist at Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that published the caricatures, I was told how intense the debates had been among the editorial staff.
The Jyllands-Posten journalist told me about the discomfort many of his colleagues were feeling about the issue, and about how they had been surprised by the strong reaction of both the country's Muslims and the Arab diplomats stationed there. My advice then was for Muslims to avoid reacting emotionally, and instead to denounce the racist behavior through quiet explanations of why the cartoons were hurtful to them. To demonstrate would be to risk both offering an opportunity for Denmark's growing far right wing to flex its muscle and instigating a mass anti-Danish movement in the Muslim world that might be impossible to control.
At the time, it seemed the tension would not spread beyond Denmark's borders. Yet three months later, fuel was again thrown on the controversy's simmering flames, and the situation is now out of control, with tragic consequences.
After Jyllands-Posten first published the caricatures, a number of Danish Muslims brought news of the issue to the Middle East and stirred up resentment in several countries. Governments in the region, happy to prove their attachment to Islam — and by doing so find some sort of legitimacy in the eyes of their own people — took advantage of this piece of good fortune and presented themselves as champions of the great cause. Back in Europe, this was enough for some politicians, intellectuals and journalists to present themselves as champions of the equally great struggle for freedom of expression, as resistance fighters against religious obscurantism and for the preservation of Western values.
What an incredible simplification. What a simplistic polarization.
To hear these people tell it, this is a clash of civilizations — a confrontation between, on the one hand, the inalienable principle of freedom of speech and, on the other hand, the principle of the inviolable sacred sphere. When presented in such terms, he who does not win this debate loses.
Muslims demand apologies and threaten to attack European interests and even people. Western governments, intellectuals and journalists refuse to bend to the threats, and several newspapers have added to the controversy by republishing the caricatures. The majority of sane people around the world, meanwhile, are observing these excesses with perplexity, and asking what craziness drives this madness.
Let us be clear: This is not a matter of a clash of civilizations. This affair does not symbolize the confrontation between the principles of Enlightenment and those of religion.
What is really at the heart of this sad story is the capacity to be free, rational and reasonable, in regard to both one's own beliefs and those of others. The fracture that seems to have opened is not, as some are saying, between the West and the Muslim world. Rather, it is between those who are able to assert reasonably their identity and their belief in faith or in reason, and those who are driven by blind passions, exclusive certainties, reductive perceptions of the other and hasty conclusions.
Lost in all the righteous anger is a basic understanding of the core beliefs behind the resentment. Those rushing to defend freedom of expression may not fully realize that it is strictly forbidden in Islam to represent the Prophets in any way. It is not only a matter of fundamental respect. It is — much like in Judaism — a principle of faith that the image of God and the Prophets are never to be represented, in order to avoid any idolatrous temptations.
In that sense, to represent a Prophet is a grave transgression. Moreover, when clumsy confusions and insults are added, as was perceived to be the case with the caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban in the form of a bomb, one can understand the shock that was expressed by many Muslims around the world — and not only by practicing Muslims or radical Islamists.
Most Muslims feel that the hurt caused by the caricatures was simply too much, and it has been good for them to be able to express it and important for them to be heard. However, it is also necessary for Muslims not to forget that Western societies have known public derision, irony and criticism toward religious symbols and even God for the last three centuries.
Even though such attitudes are nearly unheard of in Muslim majority countries, it is imperative that Muslims learn to keep a critical intellectual distance when faced with such provocations. Muslims must not let themselves always be driven by passionate zeal and fervor.
It would have been, and it remains, preferable for Muslims to expose their grievances against the Jyllands-Posten caricatures — which are as much clumsy as they are stupidly nasty — to the general public without roaring anger, and instead wait until a more reasonable debate could be opened. What is welling up today among Muslims is as much excess as it is insane. The obsessive demands for an apology, the calls for boycotting European products, and the threats of physical and armed reprisals are totally excessive — and these excesses must be rejected and condemned.
At the same time, it is also irresponsible to invoke the right to freedom of expression in order to give oneself the right to say anything any way one wishes against anybody one chooses. Despite recent claims to the contrary, it is simply not true that in Western societies everything is permitted in the name of freedom of expression.
Each country has its own laws regarding racial or religious insults. A body of specific rules based on each respective society's culture, traditions and collective psychology regulates the relationship between the individual and the diversity of cultures and religions. Although Western societies generally share a similar legal framework, each country has its own memory and its own sensitivities, and wisdom requires acknowledging and respecting that reality.
What is needed is not the enactment of laws to restrain the scope of free speech, but rather a broad appeal for all to exercise their right to freedom of expression in a more decent manner. What is needed is not the imposition of more legislation, but the nurturing of more of a sense of civic responsibility. Muslims are asking for more respect, not more censorship.
We — in both the Western and Muslim worlds — are at a crossroads. The false divisions being drawn are threatening to destroy the bridges our shared common values have built. We are in dire need of mutual trust.
We must reassert the inalienable right to freedom of expression, while at the same time urge the measured exercise of that right. We must promote a self-critical approach to our affairs that refuses exclusive truths and narrow-minded, us-and-them visions of the world.
The crisis provoked by these caricatures has shown how the worst is possible when two worlds of reference become deaf to each other and succumb to the temptation to define themselves against each other. This is a disaster that extremists on both sides will not fail to use to further their own agendas.
To those of you who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and who understand the necessity of opening constructive and critical debate, I say this: If you are not ready to stand up, speak out and be more committed to resisting the dangerous currents of our times, we can only expect sad and painful tomorrows.
Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born philosopher, is one of the leading Muslim voices in Europe. A visiting fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, and senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation in London, he is author of "Western Muslims and the Future of Islam" (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Jewish Canadians, Loyal Liberals, Lose Insider Status
By SHELDON GORDON
February 10, 2006
TORONTO — In Canada's recent federal election, Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper campaigned for Jewish votes as a staunch supporter of Israel, but the 300,000-strong Jewish community stayed loyal to the ruling Liberal Party. Harper won the election anyway, and he is forming a minority government without having a single Jewish Parliament member on his team. It's the first time since 1979 that the community won't be represented by one of its own at the center of power.
Despite this lack of insider status, however, many Jews, especially those on the right, are hopeful that Harper's conservative agenda will prove more responsive to Jewish concerns — especially on Israel — than did the policies of the defeated Liberal government. But others think that the weak Jewish electoral support for Harper will make it difficult for him to override the Foreign Affairs department's longstanding pro-Palestinian tilt.
The election results saw four Jewish members — including former justice minister Irwin Cotler — returned to Parliament, but to the opposition Liberal benches, while two Jewish Members of Parliament from Quebec lost their races. Former Liberal Government House leader Jacques Saada lost in a Quebec district in which Muslim opponents made an issue of his Zionist background, including his youthful service in the Israeli military. Meanwhile, the few Jewish candidates who ran on the Conservative ticket were all soundly defeated.
Although the Conservatives denounced the Liberals as fickle friends of Israel, most Jews apparently cast their ballots on the basis of domestic concerns. Harper, whose base is in Calgary, Alberta, failed to score any victories in Canada's three largest cities — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — as urban Jews joined other city slickers in rejecting the Conservative Party's perceived "hidden agenda" of social conservatism, including its opposition to abortion.
(Henry Morgentaler, the Jewish physician who overturned Canada's anti-abortion laws in the 1980s by operating abortion clinics and winning jury acquittals in two criminal trials, warned the week before the vote that a Conservative government would try to take away women's reproductive rights. Harper denied such intentions, but he did indicate that he would seek to roll back the Liberal government's approval of same-sex marriage.)
Harper's first item of business as prime minister-elect was to respond to the Hamas victory, which came two days after his win. The Jewish community was heartened that he lined up with America and Europe in vowing not to deal with a Hamas-led government unless it renounces violence and recognizes Israel's right to exist.
The Conservatives, he said at a press conference, had "led the charge in the past couple of years to have Hamas listed as a terrorist organization, and we experienced some significant and unexpected resistance from the [Liberals] in that, so we have taken a very hard line on Hamas."
Harper did not say whether Canadian development aid to the Palestinian Authority would be discontinued if Hamas maintains its hard-line positions. Defeated Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin had pledged $19.6 million in additional Canadian aid to the P.A. following Israel's pullout from Gaza last August, bringing the total Canadian aid to the Palestinians to $248 million since the P.A. was formed in 1993.
But the Liberals, under Martin, had tried to make Canada's voting record at the United Nations more balanced on General Assembly resolutions critical of Israel. The Liberal government recently opposed, or at least abstained on, a few resolutions that they had supported in previous years. The Canada-Israel Committee, the country's major pro-Israel lobby, welcomed the change.
But Neil Drabkin, the losing Conservative candidate in Cotler's constituency, was unimpressed: "There was a complete abdication of responsibility by successive [Liberal] foreign ministers to the civil service, who have traditionally not been very supportive of Israel. The new Conservative government will make sure the interests of the Jewish community are protected and, indeed, reflected in our policies. But it would have been nice for the Jewish community to have elected members in the government."
The Conservative victory may shift the relative influence of Jewish advocacy groups. Significantly, the morning after the election, the right-leaning B'nai Brith Canada issued a news release that heartily congratulated the Harper team; the centrist Canadian Jewish Congress did not (although Congress President Ed Morgan said his group had sent a letter of congratulations to Harper).
Nonetheless, said Rochelle Wilner, past president of B'nai Brith Canada, "Congress, for a long time, bashed people like Stephen Harper." She recalls that when B'nai Brith invited Stockwell Day, Harper's ardently pro-Israel foreign affairs lieutenant, to attend a community roundtable, "the slamming that I got personally from my friends at Congress was unbelievable: 'How can you meet with those right-wing redneck people?'"
Morgan was the lawyer for a group of Reform rabbis who last year supported Cotler's legislation recognizing same-sex marriage — a hot-button issue for the Conservatives. But he said he is "not worried" that he, or Congress, faces a "loss of influence" with the new regime. "This government will be highly intelligent in the way that it reads the community, and will want to tap into as wide a constituency as possible," Morgan said.