Further reading.

If you haven’t heard about the cartoon controversy and would like to read more look at the following places (you can even see the offending images):

The cartoon series appearing on this page that sparked a global controversy was commissioned and published by a Danish newspaper as a deliberate challenge to Muslim insistence that their religious feelings must be given special consideration.

“It’s important for our readers to see what the fuss is about and to make up their own minds. Ours is a secular society based on Western ideals of tolerance and open debate, even if that may occasionally offend.”

“We do not wish to be deliberately provocative but neither should we allow ourselves to be intimidated.”

“If we allow Christianity and more particularly the Catholic Church and the Pope to be satirised, and we do, should Islam be treated differently?”

“In its pure form Islam is a religion based on peace and tolerance. This is a test of that tolerance.”

Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Hungary have reprinted caricatures originally published in Denmark, arguing that press freedom is more important than the protests and boycotts they have provoked.

Up to 300 militant Indonesian Muslims went on a rampage inside the lobby of a Jakarta building housing the Danish embassy yesterday in protest over cartoons that Muslims say insult Islam and the Prophet Mohammad.

Iraq’s top Shia Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani condemned the publication, but said militant Islamists were partly to blame for distorting the image of Islam

Newspapers across the globe debate the controversy over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad, with Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, which originally commissioned the drawings, blaming some Muslim religious leaders for spreading “lies and misinformation.”

Cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in several European newspapers have caused outrage among some Muslims. The BBC News website looks at the key questions behind the row.

There is no specific, or explicit ban on images of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad - be they carved, painted or drawn.

However, chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth... [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.”

This is taken by Muslims to mean that Allah cannot be captured in an image by human hand, such is his beauty and grandeur. To attempt such a thing is seen as an insult to Allah.