Joe Woodard, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, February 11, 2006
Two Calgary-based publications will be among the first in Canada to print controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have sparked riots across the Islamic world and protests in the West.
The Jewish Free Press, going to 2,000 Calgary homes, will be the first, running them in its Feb. 9 issue.
And the Calgary-based Western Standard magazine, with a circulation of 40,000 across Canada, will follow suit in its issue hitting the newsstands late next week.
The Jewish Free Press has the front page headline, "First they came for the cartoonists. . ." together with portraits of Muhammad printed over the last 200 years (including an icon now on sale on the streets of Tehran, Iran).
On page two, the Jewish Free Press has a selection of the Danish cartoons, including the "Muhammad in a bomb-turban" print, now being marketed on T-shirts by the American manufacturer MetroSpy.
"I'm not trying to flaunt the cartoons'' to anger Muslims, said Jewish Free Press publisher Richard Bronstein.
"But, hey folks, surely we have a right to see what this is all about. It's not anti-Muslim or pro-Muslim. We have a duty to be informed, so we can decide whether the cartoons justify all the rampaging around the world."
The Jewish Free Press includes a selection of anti-Semitic cartoons printed in Muslim countries -- like a cartoon of hook-nosed, diabolical Jew tunnelling under Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
Muslims Against Terrorism founder Syed Soharwardy said the Danish cartoons are "completely unacceptable."
Soharwardy said Muslims don't expect the right to stop portraits of Muhammad in western publications, because they are non-Muslim and not under Sharia law.
But these cartoons of the Prophet are deliberately hateful, Soharwardy said, and "insulting faith is not acceptable.
He added: "If I make fun of the Holocaust, is that freedom of speech?"
The Danish cartoons are widely available on the Internet. But when the University of Prince Edward Island student paper tried to print them this week, university security guards seized all their copies.
The Calgary Herald has decided not to publish the drawings.
Late Friday, the president of the Calgary Jewish Community Council released a statement dissociating the council from the independent Jewish Free Press. Nelson Halpern said the council wouldn't have published the cartoons since "they are offensive to Muslims," and the Jewish community itself has so often been "offended by anti-Semitic cartoons which have appeared in Western and Middle Eastern media."
Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant said the mainstream media have refrained from publishing the cartoons "not out of respect for Islam, but out of fear."
"The mainstream media has never shown any respect for religion until now," Levant said.
"They mock Christians and Jews, and they're not afraid of offending them, because they know Christians and Jews won't cut off their heads."
Levant said the cartoons were "the biggest story of the week, and it would be a failure of reporting to do a story about the cartoons without printing them." Second, the cartoons themselves are "relatively innocuous," compared to the mockery Christians and Jews routinely experience from a free press, he said.
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