Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Another Egyptian Newspaper Reprints the Cartoons laid to Waste

Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan members of Parliament are asking for the punishment of another Egyptian daily newspaper that re-printed the cartoons. However, immediately before the 40,000 copies could find their way to the local market with Prophet Muhammed cartoons, they were withdrawn and gone in waste.

The state-owned paper Al Akhbar tried to reprint the cartoons a week ago.

The Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson Hamdy Hassan on February 14 during the People’s Assembly morning session, asked for punishing the paper. The paper’s editor-in-chief and board said they were not aware of the re-printing of the cartoons, however once they were informed the paper was withdrawn from the markets.

The reason why the member is asking for punishment is what he believes that the paper is intentionally is in defiance to the feelings of the Muslims by insisting on publishing the insulting cartoons, so it is not only the Danish paper. The second reason, he mentioned is tha printing 40,000 copies then executing them is a waste of the public money. The conclusion of the session was that the Higher Council of the Press in Egypt will conduct an investigation into the issuance of the 40, 000 copies with the insulting cartoons.

To add insult to injury, the Parliament’s Speaker condemned Al Akhbar’s reprinting of the cartoons and referred the issue to the parliament’s cultural, religious and media committees to report to him on Al Akhbar’s bad deed.

Minister of legal and parliaments affairs Mofeed Shehab said that the government does not accept any foreign or Egyptian papers' attempts to insult the prophet and that the government shares the Parliament’s condemnation to Al Akhbar news paper.

Apparently, the Muslim Brotherhood and the secular government of Egypt’s stances concur. The Egyptian Speaker involves the Committee of religion with culture of media. Who will win? Of course the committee of Religion in all cases. If the Committee of religion says that God said so and so, who can say anything after God?

The government-owned paper which is supposed to represent the secular government admits editorial mistakes for letting the paper to the markets without informing the editor in chief. Though Al Akhbar is not one of my favorite papers as it blindly follows the regime’s agenda, the Muslim brotherhood together with government officials and the Speaker secured a punishment for a failed attempt to published the cartoons for the second time in Egypt.

3 Comments:

At 5:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have a question -- I thought the purpose of not drawing Muhammad was to avoid idolatry, the elevation of Muhammad to godhood. Why are people rioting over drawings of Muhammad when there are so many depictions of God (and plenty of them negative) in western art?

Doesn't this selective outrage elevate Muhammad above God?

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think this, I just can't find any discussion of what seems like a rather obvious logical contradiction.

 
At 5:44 PM, Blogger programmer craig said...

Good question, previous anon. It seems many moslems treat their prophet as if he were a deity, with or without pictures of him. Which is exactly what the prohibition on pictures was meant to prevent!?

We Christians (many of us) have the same problem with Jesus, by the way. So I'm not condemning muslims for that, I'm just wondering at the apparrent confusion over the issue.

 
At 9:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We all have one God, but each religion has its own prophet. I expect from you that you should respect God as we all do, but if you do not, then it is your own problem and God can take care of it, but the prohpet Muhammad issue here is different. There were many drawings, but those ones were very offensive and the guy wanted to offend all Muslims by doing this. Freedom of press is just nonsense, simply because they could not publish the Iranian drawings on holocaust. Can you tell me why? Just because he is coward and he wants to instult Muslims only.

For you who do not know about prophet Muhammad, I encourage you all to visit this website:
http://www.cair-net.org/Muhammad/default.asp

Everybody is influenced by media, and never try to read about or explore prophet's Muhmmad life.

We - Muslims - love all prophets and respect them all. Depicting Jesus Christ or Moses (PBUH) in a bad way is offensive to us as well.

 

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