Thursday 27 april 2006
Fresh protests against 'blasphemous cartoons'

Thousands of students at Ain Shams University in Cairo protested yesterday against the publication of blasphemous cartoons that appeared in some European newspapers.
The students staged a demonstration on campus and called for a boycott of those countries that allowed the publication of cartoons, of which one depicted the Prophet Mohamed as a terrorist.
"The insult to Islam and its Prophet, for which European countries and their press refused to apologise, will inflame inter-religious conflict and feed the spirit of extremism," said a statement issued by the demonstrators.
A similar protest was held at the Aswan branch of Al-Azhar University. Offending other religions is a threat to world stability and security, the students warned, adding that they also rejected freedom of expression as a pretext to insult the religious beliefs of others.
Twelve cartoons of the Prophet of Islam were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten on 30 September 2005, unleashing a wave of angry protest in the Islamic world.
In a new twist, Iran's best-selling newspaper yesterday launched a competition to find the best Holocaust cartoon.
The daily paper Hamshahri said the contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech, the reason put forward by European newspapers for publishing the cartoons of Mohamed
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