The cartoon rebellion spreads to Germany, France, Britain and elsewhere
The New York Times reports that newspapers in The Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland have published the cartoons that originally appeared in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last year. The cartoons have set off a firestorm of protest in Muslim countries around the world and it is possible that a series of bomb attacks in Iraq last Sunday were in response to the cartoons.
It is also possible that the agitation against the cartoons helped derail a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that would have outlawed speech that incite religious hatred, had it not been squashed by Parliament. The Danish cartoons became a clear example of what kind of expressions were threatened by the law, making MP’s balk.
