Muslims say Western media hypocritical on cartoons [View All]

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http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6450580&cKey=1139407534000

DUBAI (Reuters) - Muslims have decried as hypocrites Western dailies which have cited free speech as the reason for printing disrespectful cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, saying the same newspapers take pains to avoid lampooning Jews. snip

What is really insulting, some Muslim clerics and politicians say, is that Europeans do not think twice about denigrating Islam but view ridicule of Judaism as anti-Semitic.

"What about freedom of expression when anti-Semitism is involved? Then it is not freedom of expression. Then it is a crime," said Arab League chief Amr Moussa. snip

"The double standards are as clear as the sun," said Abdul Latif Arabiyat, a senior member of Jordan's main Islamist party.

"They (Europeans) don't dare lampoon the Holocaust or their own sacred religious symbols but sanction attacks on our sacred values. They only hold implacable enmity towards Islam."

Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper which first published the caricatures had previously turned down cartoons of Jesus as too offensive, the artist said on Wednesday.