Hamas joins call for calm in cartoon row
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-02-10 09:48

In Brussels, European Union justice commissioner Franco Frattini called for an urgent "relaunch of dialogue" with the Islamic world in response to the wave of protests.

Nearly 3,000 Danes by Thursday afternoon had signed an open letter calling for "peace with the Muslim world".

In Paris, close to 100 Arab and European academics, political and religious figures also issued a joint appeal for "moderation and wisdom" in the row.

However in Lebanon, the head of the country's Shiite movement Hezbollah insisted on an apology for the cartoons, as hundreds of thousands of Shiites gathered in southern Beirut to mark the Ashura festival.

"There will be no compromise before we receive an apology," Hassan Nasrallah told the crowds at the Shiite gathering.

Up to 15,000 South African Muslims also took to the streets in Cape Town, and handed over a petition to the Danish consulate.

The protestors sang Arabic songs and carried banners stating "Cartooning our prophet will earn you no profit" and "We will sacrifice our lives for our prophet."

The United States warned of potential violence during protests planned this week in Kenya's capital.

Kenyan Muslims have called for demonstrations, including a possible march on the Danish embassy in Nairobi.

The White House, meanwhile, insisted US President George W. Bush would go ahead with his planned trip to Pakistan in March despite widespread outrage over the cartoons there. Protesters burned his effigy Wednesday.

Egyptian writer and Nobel literature prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz said a boycott of Danish products was "the only option" for Muslims to retaliate.

"The world only understands the language of force," he told the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly.

Liberal Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali said the European press had been right to publish contentious cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Ali, a close friend of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004, said media who "lacked the courage to show their readers the caricatures" should be ashamed.

Somali-born Ali, who describes herself as "a dissident of Islam", told journalists in Berlin: "I am of the opinion that it was correct to publish the cartoons of Mohammed in Jyllands Posten and it was right to re-publish them in other papers across Europe.

"Shame on those politicians who stated that publishing and re-publishing the drawings was 'unnecessary', 'insensitive', 'disrespectful' and 'wrong'," she added, echoing the words of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Ali said it was wrong to expect people from other cultures to abide by the Muslim ban on depicting their prophet.

"Demanding that people who do not accept Mohammed's teachings should refrain from drawing him is not a request for respect but a demand for submission."

She listed numerous teachings of Mohammed which she rejected and said she believed there was a need to be critical of him to educate people.

"The prophet did and said good things. But I wish to defend the position that he was also disrespectful and insensitive to those who disagreed with him.

"I think it is right to make critical drawings and films of Mohammed."