Danish editor behind Prophet drawings says he'd publish Iran's Holocaust cartoons.
I wonder how anyone could find anything funny about the Holocaust? In my opinion, this cartoon business is getting sicker and sicker and will only lead to more hatred all round. It's like seeing how much gasoline one can pour on a fire before one is burned.
abclocal.go.com
>>February 8, 2006 (NEW YORK) - The Danish editor behind the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that ignited deadly riots in the Muslim world said Wednesday he's trying to coordinate with an Iranian paper soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust.
"My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper, and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them," Flemming Rose said Wednesday in an interview on CNN's "American Morning."
The Iranian newspaper Hamshahri said Tuesday it would hold the competition to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Those cartoons were first published by Rose's newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September. As Muslim protests mounted, numerous European newspapers have reprinted them in recent days in the name of free expression, provoking wider and angrier protests.
Rose, Jyllands-Posten's culture editor, told CNN he came up with the idea after several local cases of self-censorship involving people fearing reprisals from Muslims.
"There was a story out there and we had to cover it," Rose said. "We just chose to cover it in a different way, according to the principal: Don't tell it, show it."
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 Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.
"I do not regret it," Rose said. "I think it is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt at a discotheque Friday night. In that sense, in our culture, if you're wearing a short skirt, that does not necessarily mean you invite everybody to have sex with you. As is the case with these cartoons, if you make a cartoon, make fun of religion, make fun of religious figures, that does not imply that you humiliate or denigrate or marginalize a religion."
The Iranian newspaper said its contest would be launched Monday and co-sponsored by the House of Caricatures, a Tehran exhibition center for cartoons. The paper and the cartoon center are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, well-known for his opposition to Israel.<< |
