15 Dead In Nigeria Cartoon Protest

Muslims Attack Christians And Burn Churches

(AP) 
But Nigeria has been spared much of the violence seen elsewhere in the world, though lawmakers in the heavily Muslim state of Kano burned Danish and Norwegian flags and barred Danish companies from bidding on a major construction project. Kano lawmakers also called on the state's 5 million people to boycott Danish goods.

With Saturday's deaths, at least 45 people have been killed in protests across the Muslim world, according to a count by The Associated Press.

In the violence in Libya, Seif el-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, said four of the 11 dead were believed to have been Egyptians or Palestinians.

"Setting the consulate on fire was a mistake, but using excessive force was the most tragic response," the younger Gadhafi said, explaining the suspension of Interior Minister Nasr al-Mabrouk.

Gadhafi expressed pride, however, that the demonstrators were behind Calderoli's resignation when "other Arab states refused or lagged behind in taking revenge for insults to their religion."

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi blamed the riots in Libya, Italy's former colony, on "thoughtless action by our minister," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.

Calderoli said he wore the shirt to show "solidarity to all those who were hit by the blind violence of religious fanaticism." He said he did not intend "to offend the Muslim religion nor to be the pretext for yesterday's violence."

In Cairo, Bishop Karsten Nissen, of Denmark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, met with Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of al-Azhar University, the world's highest Sunni Muslim seat of learning.

Tantawi said the Danish prime minister must apologize for the drawings and further demanded that the world's religious leaders, including him and Pope Benedict XVI, should meet to write a law that "condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets." He said the United Nations should then impose the law on all countries.

In response, Nissen did not address the issue of a global law but said it was impossible for Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to apologize for what a newspaper had published.

"I have brought to his Excellency (Tantawi) the apology of the newspaper, but our prime minister did not draw these cartoons. Our prime minister is not the editor of this newspaper. He cannot apologize for something he did not do," Nissen said.

So far the West and Islamic nations remain at loggerheads over fundamental, but conflicting cultural imperatives—the Western democratic assertion of a right to free speech and press freedom, versus the Islamic dictum against any representation of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims say such depictions could encourage idolatry.