Cartoon Gets No Laughs From Muslims

Papers Defend Publishing Controversial Muhammad Caricature As 'Right To Blasphemy'

(AP)  The Supreme Council of Moroccan religious leaders denounced the drawings on Wednesday.

"Muslim beliefs cannot tolerate such an attack, however small it may be," the statement said.

In Turkey, dozens of protesters from a small Islamic party staged a demonstration in front of the Danish Embassy. About 200 riot police watched the crowd from the Felicity Party, which laid a black wreath and a book about Muhammad's life at the gates of the embassy building.

Despite the show of solidarity among Europe's newspaper editors, not all Europeans appreciated the drawings.

Norway's deputy state secretary for foreign affairs, Raymond Johansen, said they encourage distrust between people of different faiths.

"I can understand that Muslims find the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Norwegian weekly ... to be offensive. This is unfortunate and regrettable," Johansen said on a visit to Beirut.

There was also anger in France, which has Western Europe's largest Muslim community with an estimated 5 million people.

Mohammed Bechari, president of the National Federation of the Muslims of France, said his group would start legal proceedings against France Soir because of "these pictures that have disturbed us, and that are still hurting the feelings of 1.2 billion Muslims."

French government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope struck a neutral tone, saying France is "a country that is attached to the principle of secularism, and this freedom clearly should be exercised in a spirit of tolerance and respect for the beliefs of everyone."

France Soir, which is owned by an Egyptian magnate, has been struggling to stay afloat and bring in readers in recent years.

French theologian Sohaib Bencheikh spoke out against the pictures in a column in France Soir accompanying them Wednesday.

"One must find the borders between freedom of expression and freedom to protect the sacred," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the West has lost its sense of the sacred."