The Danish newspaper that created a storm in the Arab world by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) has cancelled plans to reprint several cartoons dealing with Israel, a senior editor told Haaretz yesterday.

"We wanted to show that we make fun of everyone, not only Muslims," said Pierre Collignon of Jyllands-Posten. "But for fear of being misunderstood, we cancelled the plan at the last moment."

"We wanted to show that even the Jews, with all the historic sensitivity, accepted satire aimed at their sacred symbols without staging angry demonstrations."

Meanwhile, a Jyllands-Posten's editor said on CNN yesterday that he would cooperate with the Iranian daily Hamshahri, which announced a competition of cartoons on the Holocaust. However, the newspaper hastened to issue a denial.

Editor-in-chief Carsten Juste said the editor had been misunderstood. "On no account would we publish Holocaust caricatures together with the Iranian daily," he said. What can we surmise?

Asaf Uni, On e-mail

I think that violence is not the solution. We have to use our logic. We can boycott Danish and French products. I think that will be the right thing to do. And we Muslims must show patience and we must remember that Islam is a peaceful religion.

A B M Rashid, HUT, Finland

The Muslim world has been set alight due to the recent controversy with the cartoons published in the Danish newspaper. We have all read or heard the news about it, so no sense into going further.

So what do many Muslims do in retaliation?

They cause violence. As if saying, "How dare you call me violent? I'll see you shot for this!"

No one seems to see the absurdity of the situation.

The cartoon itself was unremarkable and created solely to stir controversy and peddle a few papers. But what Muslims are not realising is that the country they were published in is protected by its own laws.

Christians and Jews are not spared ridicule in newspapers in the West. There are even several comics and cartoons which abound, depicting Jesus doing day-to-day activities. Of course, the cartoon went too far, but one must also ask oneself, as a Muslim, seeing the wanton destruction and slogans that have been bandied about recently during the protests, whether people aren't taking things too far.

Abraham Kent, London, England

There has been quite a volume of write-ups on this subject in the recent days. It is probably worthwhile, at this time, to step back and take an objective look at the issues involved.

To begin with, as has been vigorously asserted by one side, the Western Press does have the right to publish what they want. Of course one expects some judgment in such exercise, and it is widely conceded that it was poor judgment on the part of the Danish paper to do what they had done. At the same time, it is established that the Muslims worldwide have a right to take offence and protest at what they consider a sacrilege.

Now it is important to analyse what the target and the form of such protestation should be, and what avenues are available for redress.

The first question would be, who should the protest be targeted at ? It might help to think of a hypothetical situation: Suppose a Bangladeshi newspaper decides to publish some items that turn out to be offensive to the Hindus. Now, imagine that the Indian population is up in arms about it, and starts burning the Bangladesh Embassy in New Delhi, and threatening to kill Bangladeshi people. Obviously, this would not be a rational response, since the population of Bangladesh, or the Bangladesh government for that matter, had no control over what the newspaper printed. (Of course, it is conceivable that the government will decide to ban the paper and arrest the editors; but such options are not available in Western countries). So it is important to keep the perspective when mounting protests against the Danish cartoons. Unfortunately, the overwhelming response from Muslim population, primarily in the Middle East, has missed the mark.

The next question would be, what should be the form of protests ? Here again, it would be instructive to look at a scenario that would most likely play out in the US should a newspaper decide to print something derogatory about the Black Americans (using the 'N-word', for instance). The newspapers here have the right to print such items. However, if they proceed to do so, there will be condemnation, not only from the Black population, but also from a large section of the White population who will find this offensive. The politicians will also join in (although there will be no clamour for the President to ban the paper; he has no authority to do anything like that). However, the crowds will not burn down the newspaper office, nor threaten the editors to death. More likely form of protest would be a boycott of the newspaper, and more effectively, boycott of any business that advertises in the newspaper. Since advertisement revenues are the lifeline of the newspapers, this could essentially mean the end of the newspaper as business. In this context, the commercial boycott of the Danish products probably made some sense (although indirectly, since the businesses themselves may not have anything to do with the newspaper); the diplomatic reprisals have some weight of symbolic protests. Once again, subsequent events have deviated from what effective form of protests should have been.

The third item relates to redress for the perceived offence. While most of the Western countries do not prohibit anti-religious material, there are laws on books against libel, defamation, incitement to hatred, etc. Muslim citizens of these countries can certainly pursue such avenues. It should be noted here, that some countries do have some restrictive laws, such as against 'holocaust denial' in Germany. However even in those countries, the government cannot summarily take action against individuals or newspapers for such transgressions. The individual or organisation has to be sued in the Courts of Law, and it is only after the due process that they may be penalised. Some letters in this newspaper seemed to refer to some apparent instances where Western governments supposedly took 'appropriate' actions when Christian/Jewish faiths were attacked in the newspapers. It is not apparent what actions are being referred to here, other than possible denunciations by the Prime Ministers, since such issues have to be addressed through Courts and the Ministers do not have any authority outside of law.

Of course, the above discussion does not address the issue of what might be considered provocation by some Western quarters, especially during these times of turmoil. That would be a whole new topic of discussion. But it has to be acknowledged that if their goal was to deliberately provoke a reaction from the Muslims that they could then use to justify their caricature of Muslims, I am afraid they have succeeded to a large extent.

Shabbir Parvez, Oak Hill, USA