I'm Danicus

Newspapers across Europe are taking a stand by publishing cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed. A Danish paper got into big trouble for publishing a series of such images back in the Autumn. There's been furore aplenty - Saudi Arabia recalled its Ambassador, Libya said it would close the Danish embassy, EU offices were raided in Palestine (demonstrating a remarkable level of gratitude for the years of dubious EU funding there) and Danish products have been boycotted across the Middle East.

Yikes! All for 12 pictures - though granted, some might well be deemed as offensive, and of course, Islam prohibits the depiction of the prophet in any context. (And let's give a little bit of a hand to the Imams in Denmark who helped reach a compromise.)

I wrote yesterday about how the Danish newspaper recently apologised for any offense caused, but not for publishing the cartoons.

Let me applaud the France's Paris Soir and Germany's Die Welt and of course all the online journals and blogs that have published these cartoons, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Danes and Jyllands-Posten.

I do wonder how many British newspapers will do the same, given that a law against "stirring up religious hatred" passed in Parliament last night (though not the stupidest, sternest version of it).

UPDATE: The editor of Paris Soir is sacked.

My comments on comments: I see a couple of commenters are questioning whether German, French, Italian and other papers should have published these cartoons. I agree that publishing the cartoons might be a poke in the already sore eye of the offended Muslims and that it could be seen as deliberately provocative. Maybe it is.

But in the UK at least, we face a situation of small errosions of our freedoms of expression lest we offend Islam. This means no images of pigs at Dudley Council, Burger King pulls its "offensive" ice cream and further no depiction of the prophet in a newspaper or Saudi Arabia will pull their ambassador.

In the UK, we face a situation where new legislation means that speech "offensive" to Islam might be prosecutable. There are not the same protections for freedom of speech that there is in the US, so in Europe there's a need to push back to say "this far and no further".

Speech that incites violence, that encourges people to attack others is wrong. But speech that encourages others to go into a paroxym of rage because of their offended sensibilities should not be outlawed. No one has the right to go around in a protective bubble free from anything that might offend them.