Editor & Publisher
Published: February 07, 2006
10:00 AM ET updated 1:00 PM ET
NEW YORK On Saturday, the Philadelphia Inquirer became one of the first major U.S. papers to carry a drawing featuring Muhammad — with a lit bomb stuck in his turban — that have sparked riots abroad. On Monday, more than two dozen Muslims offended by that decision picketed the newspaper.
“It’s disrespectful to us as a people,” Asim Abdur-Rashid, an imam with the Majlis Ash’Shura, an umbrella group for mosques in the Delaware Valley, told the Inquirer for a story today. “It’s disrespectful to our prophet to imply that he’s a prophet of violence.”
The group may call for a boycott and a further protest on Friday if the newspaper does not apologize.
But Bennett stood by the decision to publish the cartoon, saying it “is one of the things newspapers do to communicate directly with people” about issues important to all communities.
Few U.S. newspapers have reprinted the cartoon. The New York Times, in an editorial today, noted that it had not carried any of the cartoons and “much of the rest of the nation’s news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”
Some newspapers have carried links to the cartoon images on their Web sites, however.
Wild Thing’s comment….
I realize there are reactions to actions and in this case violent reactions to publishing the cartoons. However, unless the good guys, take a stand and ban together it shows weakness IMO. Of course it is personal choice but for me I would have to publish them. And t if I did have a newpape, I would publish them along with the ones that are hate filled against Jews. Christians and America. With dates of THEIRS to show they have been doing it for a very long time.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for other US papers to publish any of the cartoons. The American media in the main is as cowardly as most politicians.
They sure are Tom,how awful that is too.
Yep. I don’t have much use for any organized religion and none at all for one that kills people who speak out against it. Of course the America hating left wing is making the excuses and blaming the Americans and Bush and the Jews, and everyone else but themselves and the ragheads for the crimes.
Yes and the left might as well sign up for their Burka’s and Qurans the way they defend Islam and their touchie feeling concerns for the rights that might be messed with in dealing with them. grrrrrrr
Thank you for your comment GUYK.