DENMARK:Danish Muslim preachers sought to soothe Muslim anger yesterday after newspapers reprinted a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad which caused outrage in Islamic countries two years ago.
Danish papers republished one of the drawings on Wednesday in protest against what they said was a plot to murder the cartoonist who drew it.
Mostafa Chendid, an imam at the Islamic Faith Community, said Danish media had confused freedom of expression with the freedom to insult others.
But he called for all Muslims to "cool down" and "turn the other cheek" rather than pursue violence, saying this would harm Islam just as the cartoons had.
"We are trying to dampen the anger," he said at Friday prayers at a mosque in Copenhagen.
Chendid's group was at the centre of the first controversy after the cartoons were first published in 2005, helping to organise a delegation to the Middle East to present a dossier of alleged Danish insults against Islam. Several hundred Muslims gathered in central Copenhagen yesterday to protest.
Thousands of supporters of the Islamist group Hamas protested in the Gaza Strip against the reprinting.
A Danish citizen of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians were arrested this week for planning to murder Kurt Westergaard (73), a cartoonist at Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally published the drawings in September 2005.
Dozens of Islamist students burned the Danish flag in southern Pakistan on Thursday, while in Kuwait, several parliamentarians called for a boycott of Danish goods. Denmark's foreign ministry on Thursday advised Danes to avoid unnecessary travel to Pakistan.