Lawless savages. Bruce
Kidnapping in row over Muhammad cartoons By Jenny Booth and Reuters Palestinian gunman kidnapped a German from a hotel in the West Bank city of Nablus today as the row escalated over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Employees of the Yasmin Hotel in the city, said that two Palestinians took the man away at gunpoint from the hotel's coffee shop, where he had been eating with two Palestinians. Palestinian security sources said that they believed the German's first name was Christopher and that he was a volunteer for a non-governmental organisation. Police later said that he had been freed and the suspected kidnappers arrested. Earlier, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed faction in President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, threatened in a news conference to kidnap citizens of France, Denmark and Norway if they did not leave Nablus within 72 hours. The threats were part of a storm that has erupted over the cartoons, first published in the right-of-centre Danish broadsheet Jyllands-Posten in September last year, and republished in Norway last month. Newspapers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain have also reprinted the caricatures. The escalating row over the 12 caricatures has evolved into an ideological clash between Western freedom of speech and Muslim religious teachings, which rule that images of the prophet are idolatrous. The dispute has triggered violent protests in the Muslim world. The European Union offices in Gaza have twice been besieged by Islamic militants. Syria and Saudi Arabia have withdrawn their ambassadors from Copenhagen. Threats have been issued against Europeans including murder, terrorist attacks, church burnings - and kidnapping. The Muslim Association of Britain today called on all British broadcasters and newspapers not to publish the 'blasphemous' cartoon images. But the call came too late for several British newspapers and broadcasters - among them the BBC - which have already shown glimpses or partial images of the offending cartoons. A Muslim Association spokesman said: "Printing or republishing these images is not advisable, knowing that they are going to offend. It will only infuriate the British members of the Muslim community and Muslims around the world. It will be insult to injury. You can't reproduce these images in a sensitive manner." Peter Mandelson, the EU's Trade Commissioner, has been drawn into the dispute as unofficial boycotts of Danish goods have swept the Middle East. Two large Danish firms have reported a dramatic fall in sales. Mr Mandelson has already warned Saudi Arabia that the EU will take action at the World Trade Organisation action if the Riyadh government persists in sponsoring the boycott. In Europe, some or all of the cartoons have now been reprinted by newspapers in Norway, France, Italy, Germany and Spain as a gesture of solidarity with the Jyllands-Posten and the principle of free speech. British newspapers, while all devoting space to coverage of the dispute, have so far stopped short of reproducing the offending cartoons. Most chose to publish artfully cropped photographs of France Soir's front page to illustrate reports of the unfolding conflict. The BBC's one o'clock news bulletin today chose the same compromise route, screening images of foreign newspapers containing the cartoons. A spokeswoman for BBC Two's Newsnight said this afternoon that the influential news programme would be following suit - despite earlier reports that it planned to show the images in detail. The spokeswoman denied there had been a climbdown. "To give audiences an understanding of the strong feelings evoked by the story, as part of our report we show brief glimpses of the newspaper coverage of the cartoons," she said, in an official statement. "We are not mounting special programming, or showing the cartoons directly." The spokeswoman added: "Newsnight is not going to go any further than the One o'clock News and I'm not aware that there was ever any intention to do so. It will be enough to tell the story, but it is not gratuitous. There has been no change of plan." The Muslim Council of Britain said its reaction to the BBC's decision to broadcast would "depend on the context". A spokesman said: "It depends on whether they're broadcast to illustrate the story about the row developing, or, in the same way as the European newspapers have published, to gloat about freedom. "We recognise that the newspapers have full freedom. However we hope that they would be able to show restraint when it comes to these images because of the enormous hurt it would cause to Muslims." Representatives of both the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain met the Danish ambassador in London today, hoping to secure an apology. But Ahmed El-Sheikh, president of the Muslim Association of Britain, said they left Wednesday's "very constructive" meeting with simply an assurance that Denmark's government is equally concerned. Tony Blair's spokesman declined to enter the dispute, saying: "It would be entirely wrong for the Government to ... dictate in advance what media organisations can or cannot do. It's for people to reach their own judgments about what is within the law, it's not for us to say." The UK news outlets which have so far gone furthest include Channel Four news, which last night showed Muslims examining the cartoons, so that the images were visible. The website of the right-wing magazine The Spectator published the most inflammatory of the cartoons - depicting Muhammad in a bomb turban - on its website today, alongside a satirical paragraph saying that Muslims were gradually outnumbering Europeans. But the image was hastily taken down at 5pm on the orders of Stuart Reid, the magazine's acting editor, after consultation with Andrew Neil, the magazine's chief executive. "I have no doubt that the people who put the website together this morning sincerely thought that this was a good way of approaching this. I personally don't agree and I felt that it was an unnecessary provocation," said Mr Reid. "We want to deal this in a rather more serious way." Meanwhile in Europe, Jacques Lefranc, the editor of Paris daily France Soir who today splashed a caricature of the Prophet on his front page to illustrate the row, was sacked. Under the headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God", the cartoon also showed Buddha, the Christian and Jewish deities sitting on a cloud. The Christian God is saying: "Don't complain Muhammad, all of us have been caricatured." The newspaper deplored what it called the new inquisition by "backward bigots". Raymond Lakah, the paper's Egyptian owner, appeared however to disagree with its editorial line. This morning he swiftly issued a public apology and fired M Lefranc. Dalil Boubakeur, President of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, said that the newspaper had "perpetrated a real provocation in the eyes of millions of French Muslims". In an interview today Mr Mandelson criticised the cartoons as crude and juvenile, and warned British newspapers not to print them. He said: "I understand on one level the motivation of newspapers to stand up for freedom of speech. but they are almost bound to cause offence." He said that any other re-publication "throws petrol on the flames". In Gaza, EU staff were hurriedly evacuated today as masked gunmen from Islamic Jihad and a Fatah brigade conducted an armed protest outside their offices. "We will watch the office closely and if European countries continue their assaults against Islam and against the Prophet Muhammad, we will turn this office into ruins," a spokesman for the Yassir Arafat Brigades told Reuters. The leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon commented that no-one would dare to insult Muslims today had the death fatwa been carried out against author Salman Rushdie over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2021464_3,00.html) ---------------------------------------------------------- FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. 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