As violent protests to caricatures of Muhammad intensify in the Muslim world, an Iranian newspaper has found a way to express outrage: holding a contest for cartoons to make light of the Holocaust and its victims.
Tehran-based editors at Hamshahri, Iran’s largest newspaper, said they would award gold coins to the winners of their contest. “The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons,” said Graphics Editor Farid Mortazavi.
Other Iranian papers ran a cartoon online that showed a devil holding a Danish flag and the Jewish Star of David. The latest retaliations followed the publication of 12 cartoons last fall in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The cartoons featured drawings of the revered prophet wearing bombs, using swords or blindly leading robed women.
Those cartoons came to light in the Muslim world last month when seven publications in France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands reprinted them. Some editors who ran the cartoons have been fired.
Despite apologies from the Danish paper, dozens of students continued attacks on the Danish embassy in Tehran. NATO peacekeepers shot and killed three demonstrators in Afghanistan after a crowd fired weapons and threw hand grenades.
A notable victim of the violence in the Muslim world was Roman Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, an Italian who was shot while praying in his church in Turkey Feb. 5. BBC reports listed eight more deaths related to the protests in Afghanistan and one in Somalia as of Feb. 7.
Iran’s Holocaust cartoon contest received official condemnation from the Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish organization committed to remembering the Holocaust. Rabbi Marvin Hier, a center spokesman, said the newspaper’s editors are “following the classic formula of Adolf Hitler, which says if there’s a problem, it’s the fault of the Jews.” (ABP)
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