Keeping the cartoon madness rolling
February 07, 2006News & Politics
This whole editorial cartoon thing has gotten so far out of control that I'm not even about to weigh in on it except to say that the daily newspaper Hamshari in Iran announced today that, well, I'm just gonna quote from the Guardian's report:
Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust.Good times all around. Anyone want to bet who's going to post Hamshari's cartoons in the West?
The decision by the rightwing Hamshari daily to launch an international competition to find the most suitable caricatures came as demonstrators hurled firebombs and stones at the Danish embassy in Tehran and the Iranian government imposed a formal trade ban on Danish imports. Last night mobs were attempting to storm the Danish compound.
[…] Hamshari is owned by Tehran city council and its plan follows a string of anti-Zionist statements by Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in the second world war as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".
Farid Mortazavi, the paper's graphics editor, said the cartoons would be published to test the argument of western newspapers which have cited freedom of expression in printing the prophet Muhammad images.
"The western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," Mr Mortazavi said.
[Emphasis mine.]
