CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Feb. 16 Since the morning the cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad were republished in the student newspaper at the University of Illinois here, response has been swift and split. ....Muslim students and others
held a protest on the main quadrangle on Tuesday,...
"We did this to raise a healthy dialogue about an important issue that is in the news and so that people would learn more about Islam. Now, I'm basically fired."
Most major American newspapers, including The New York Times, have not published the cartoons, which were first published in a Danish newspaper last September.
But on college campuses, student journalists are still grappling with the decision, saying the choice of most of the nation's newspapers makes theirs even more crucial. Editors at some student publications at the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University, Northern Illinois University and Illinois State University have published some of the cartoons.
The decisions have set off a painful clash, seemingly pitting two of the values so often embraced in university environments freedom of speech and sensitivity
to other cultures directly against each other...
...Shaz Kaiseruddin, a third-year law student and president of the Muslim Student Association, said she awoke to a phone call from an angry colleague.
"I was in disbelief that they would do this," Ms. Kaiseruddin, 24, said. "That our own student-based newspaper would be so ignorant and disrespectful."
Producing any image of Muhammad is considered blasphemous by many Muslims, and reproducing such anti-Muslim images, she said, revealed no understanding of the pain that would carry. Students met to plan a response.
Richard Herman, the chancellor of the university, sent a letter criticizing the newspaper, which is published independently..."