26 Sep 2012

Egyptian paper campaigns against Prophet cartoons

10:09 pm on 26 September 2012

An Egyptian newspaper has launched a campaign against obscene cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published by French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The Cairo-based daily Al-Watan published 13 cartoons as part of an extra section, critical of what it sees as the West's attitude towards Muslims.

One shows a pair of glasses through which the burning World Trade Center is seen, with the caption: "Western glasses for the Islamic world," the BBC reports.

Fifty people have died in violent protests which erupted two weeks ago over the amateur film, Innocence of Muslims, produced in the US and which ridicules the Prophet.

The satirical cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo drew a small group of protesters to the French embassy in Cairo on Friday, although elsewhere in the Muslim world protests against them and Innocence of Muslims became large-scale and violent.

Al-Watan's two-page spread of cartoons was published as part of a 12-page dedicated section in Monday's responding to Charlie Hebdo.

The section also included articles by well-known secular writers, such as former Carnegie Middle East Centre research director Amr Hamzawi, and prominent Egyptian Islamic scholars and preachers, such as the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa.

The cartoons also included one showing a white man accusing an angry, bearded man of being a terrorist until he sees he is from Israel and offers him a flower instead.