FOX - LOOKING FOR HUMOR IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

With most American television networks and cable news networks refusing to show the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed that have touched off riots abroad, a fierce debate has arisen in the mainstream media over the issue of self censorship. Fox News, one of the few television outlets to show one of the cartoons, in which the prophet Mohammed wears a turban shaped like a bomb, has defended its decision to do so. In an interview with USA Today (which has not published the cartoon), anchor Chris Wallace said, "My feeling was, if we're going to tell the story about people rioting and burning down embassies, it's part of the story to know what it is that has caused such outrage." ABC aired the cartoon in its initial coverage of the riots but decided not to do so afterwards. A spokeswoman told USA Today: "We understand the sensitivity of this issue, particularly among our Muslim viewers." In Iran, the newspaper Hamshahri has launched a contest to find the "best" cartoons about the Holocaust. "The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," graphics editor Farid Mortazavi said. In Wednesday's London Times, columnist Alan Coren, a former editor of the now defunct satirical magazine Punch, observed that he was on the receiving end of numerous complaints about cartoons the magazine ran during his tenure but said that he based his editorial decisions solely on whether they were funny. The Danish cartoons, he observed, were not. Then, in his own take on Looking for Humor in the Muslim World, Coren asked, "Suppose they had been funny? Not to us infidels, we don't matter, but to Muslims. I hardly dare ask -- not because I fear the tap on the door and the scimitar to the throat, only because I recognize my own ignorance on the issue -- whether, notwithstanding the sacrilege of any representation of Muhammad, there could conceivably be circumstances under which a gag about him was so terrific that even the devout couldn't suppress a grin. ... And since you ask, that cartoon published yesterday in an Islamic paper and designed to outrage in revenge -- it showed Hitler, in bed with Anne Frank, saying 'This is one for the diary' -- made me laugh. Don't write in, for God's sake."

09/02/2006