January 31, 2006
Former US President Bill Clinton has warned of a rise in anti-Islamic prejudice. Clinton compared a series of controversial cartoons in the Danish newspaper "Jyllands-Posten", depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, with historic anti-Semitism. "So now what are we going to do?... Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?", the former US leader said at an economic conference in Doha, Qatar. "In Europe, most of the struggles we have had in the past 50 years have been to fight prejudices against Jews, to fight against anti-Semitism," he said. "Jyllands-Posten", a Danish newspaper, in September published 12 cartoons showing Muhammad as a wild-eyed, knife-wielding Bedouin flanked by women shrouded in black. One cartoon showed the Prophet wearing a turban shaped like a time bomb with a lit fuse. Another depicts him with a grey beard and holding a sword; his eyes are covered by a black rectangle.
The cartoons caused an uproar when they were first published. Muslims deem images of prophets disrespectful and caricatures blasphemous. But the situation has since escalated into a full-fledged crisis which could have result in a boycott of Danish products in Arab countries. A Norwegian magazine republished the offending cartoons in early January and fury in the Muslim world has been mounting since. Clinton described the cartoons as "appalling" and "outrageous". Last week, the President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Edgar M. Bronfman, and Israel Singer, Chairman of the WJC's Policy Council, also criticized the cartoons as "offending all Muslims instead of focusing on those fanatics that actually merit criticism." In a contribution for the "International Herald Tribune", they demanded respect for practices and customs of other religions as well.