Echoes of the cartoon scandal

On October 14, 2008, the Council of Muftis of Russia announced that, according to their information, the Department for Combating Extremism of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation would check "on the fact of the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad . " This is an article in the Russian Newsweek magazine on September 29 entitled "Who will come to us with a mosque", accompanied by a marginal callout on the infamous "cartoon scandal" of 2006. This callout was illustrated by a small fragment of one of the Danish cartoons.

The article is devoted to the problem of Islamophobia in Western Europe, and, in particular, describes the anti-Islamic congress in Cologne, which was practically disrupted by the efforts of local residents of non-Muslims and visiting political activists.

We believe that the anger of Muslims is quite justified, caused by the emphatically neutral style used to describe in detail the positions of radical anti-Islamists, the recognition by the authors of some philistine fears of Islam as justified, as well as the publication - albeit almost invisible on the page - of a fragment of one of the provocative cartoons.

Nevertheless, appealing to the prosecutor's office on such an occasion seems to us redundant. The general context of the publication and specifically this article does not suggest that a possible insult to the feelings of believers was intentionally inflicted. In our opinion, the involvement of law enforcement agencies to solve such problems in a secular state is unacceptable.

On October 15, 2008, the editor-in-chief of the Russian Newsweek magazine, Mikhail Fishman, apologized to the believers, saying that the intention of the magazine was not to offend anyone, that the authors of the article only raised an important and burning problem of modern society. On the other hand, Fishman noted that on the part of his publication "it was an unfortunate oversight not to pay sufficient attention to the preparation of reference material" .

On November 18, 2008, the Moscow prosecutor's office issued a warning to the magazine's editor-in-chief about the inadmissibility of extremist activity.

On November 20, 2008, it became known that Alexander Saltanov, Special Representative of the President of Russia for the Middle East, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, applied to the Moscow Prosecutor's Office with a request to check these publications.

Read about this story also in our section Religion in a secular society .

Sources

• Council of Muftis of Russia declares // Website of the Council of Muftis of Russia. 2008. October 14.
• Who will come to us with a mosque // Russian Newsweek. 2008. September 29.
• Russian Newsweek apologizes for reprinting Muhammad cartoons // Religare. 2008. 15 October.
• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation appealed to the prosecutor's office in connection with the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad // Islamnews. 2008. November 20.