U.S.: Muhammad Cartoon 'Offensive'

Says Inciting Ethnic Hatred Unacceptable; Global Protests Grow

(CBS/AP) 
Earlier, Pakistani lawmakers called the drawings blasphemous, then passed a resolution condemning them as hurting "the faith and feelings of Muslims all over the world."

The resolution urged the government to take unspecified "economic and political actions to prevent uncivilized behavior" by the European media that printed the drawings.

In mostly Muslim Malaysia, about 60 members of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party demonstrated outside Denmark's Embassy in Kuala Lumpur demanding the Danish government stop newspapers from reprinting the drawings.

"It's an uncivilized act, it's heinous," Hanifah Maidin, the party's youth chief, said after submitting a letter of complaint to Danish officials.

In Bangladesh, about 500 Muslims rallied outside a mosque after Friday prayers, and the top Islamic advisory body in Singapore said the drawings had no purpose other than to "incite hatred."

"No one is allowed to ridicule or cast aspersions on the faith of a people under the cloak of free expression," the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore said in a statement.

Indonesia has 220 million people, most of them moderate Muslims, but Friday's protest was among the first held in the sprawling archipelago over the cartoons.

Fearing more in the days ahead, Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda urged restraint and said he had asked police to upgrade security at embassies in Jakarta, the capital.

Those who took part in Friday's rally were members of the Islamic Defenders Front, which campaigns for Islamic law and often takes to the street against perceived violators of Islamic rules at home or abroad.

Three protesters said they were received by the Danish ambassador, and claimed he told them he planned to apologize to Indonesian Muslims for causing offense.

"If he doesn't, then we will demand the government kick him out," said protest organizer Ali Reza.

Meanwhile, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen called a meeting Friday to detail the government's position and actions in the matter. He reiterated his stance that the government cannot interfere with issues concerning the press. More than 70 ambassadors attended, including those from predominantly Muslim Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Lebanon.

Egypt's ambassador said that Rasmussen's response to the Muhammad drawings controversy has been inadequate and that the country should do more to "appease the whole Muslim world."

Mona Omar Attia said after meeting with Fogh Rasmussen that she will urge diplomatic protests against the Scandinavian country to continue.

The Islamic reaction in Europe has been muted compared to the scenes of rage in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, where demonstrators have burned Danish flags.

Demonstrators marched from a London mosque toward Denmark's Embassy on Friday to protest the newspaper caricatures.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw criticized the decision to republish the cartoons, saying that while freedom of speech should be respected "there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory."

"I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong," he told reporters.

French President Jacques Chirac on Friday urged respect and reason when dealing with religious beliefs, in response to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have incensed Muslims in France and worldwide.

Chirac met Friday with Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith. "France, a country of secularism, respects all religions and all beliefs," he said, but added that "the principle of freedom of expression constitutes one of the foundations of the Republic."