A French newspaper, getting it right…
Under the headline “We have the right to caricature God,” a French newspaper today reprinted the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have ignited extraordinary anti-Danish protests, death threats and boycotts across the Muslim world. France Soir published the drawings, first printed by Jyllands-Posten, a right-of-centre Danish broadsheet last September, across pages four and five of this morning’s edition with an editorial that defended the freedom of the press. “The publication of 12 cartoons in the Danish press has shocked the Muslim world for whom the representation of Allah and his prophet is banned,” the newspaper said. “But because no religious dogma can impose its view on a democratic and secular society, France Soir publishes the incriminated cartoons.” For its front page, the newspaper even commissioned its own image, showing a peeved Muhammad sitting on a cloud with Buddha, a Jewish God and a Christian God, who says: “Don’t complain Muhammad, we’ve all been caricatured here.” In an accompanying commentary, the editor of France Soir, which is in financial difficulties and has a readership of around 60,000, said he would never apologise for the decision to publish. Serge Faubert wrote: “Enough lessons from these reactionary bigots!” There is nothing in these incriminated cartoons that intends to be racist or denigrate any community as such. Some are funny, others less so. That’s it. That is why we have decided to publish them,” he added. “No, we will never apologise for being free to speak, to think and to believe.”
Judging by his remarks in Qatar yesterday (in which he attacked the Danish cartoons as “appalling”, Bill Clinton will, doubtless, once again be, well, appalled.