Malaysia bans possession of Prophet cartoons

[Ghazi]

Salaam

Malaysia bans possession of Prophet cartoons
10/02/2006 11:20


By Mark Bendeich

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has slapped a blanket ban on circulating or even possessing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad after it closed a local newspaper for printing the same caricatures that have enraged the Islamic world.

In neighbouring Indonesia, police said on Friday they were questioning an editor over publication of a cartoon of the prophet.

In a short statement confirming its order to shut down the Sarawak Tribune, the government of mainly-Muslim Malaysia said it had issued the ban to ensure racial harmony.

It is now an offence to publish, import, produce, manufacture, circulate, distribute or possess caricatures that may "jeopardise public harmony and safety, which may cause chaos, or endanger public peace or national interest", it said.

The Sarawak Tribune blamed a non-Muslim editor’s "oversight" for its publication last weekend of the caricatures that sparked violent protests in parts of the Muslim world.

The incident embarrassed Malaysia’s government, headed by an Islamic scholar who also currently chairs the world’s largest grouping of Islamic nations, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

"We are very serious about this," Mohamed Nazri Aziz, a minister in the prime minister’s department, told the New Straits Times in its Friday edition.

"As the Organisation of the Islamic Conference chairman, it would be awkward if Malaysia slams the West for their insensitivity when, in our own backyard, we don’t have control."

Tens of thousands of Muslims have demonstrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa over cartoons first published in Denmark, then other countries in Europe and elsewhere.

One caricature showed the Prophet Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Many Muslims consider any portrayal of their Prophet as blasphemous, let alone one showing him as a terrorist.

The Sarawak Tribune is published in Malaysia’s eastern state of Sarawak on the jungle-clad island of Borneo. It is one of the few Malaysian states where Muslims are in a minority.

The government has suspended the paper’s publishing licence pending the outcome of an investigation by the Internal Security Ministry, but it is unclear if the Tribune will ever reopen, even when the suspension order is lifted.

"There may not be a Sarawak Tribune anymore," the daily’s editorial advisor, Idris Buang, told local media.

In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, an editor was being questioned over his tabloid Peta’s publication of a caricature of the prophet, police official Kusdiyanto in the Jakarta suburb area of Bekasi told Reuters.

"The PETA chief editor was named a suspect since yesterday. We have been investigating him for the past three days. He has not been detained yet," Kusdiyanto said.

"He is named a suspect for publishing the prophet cartoon."

Kusdiyanto declined to specify what statutes might be involved but the Jakarta Post newspaper said an article on religious blasphemy applied, which carried a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Thursday in a speech marking his country’s national press day: "We must take a lesson from the publication in a Danish newspaper. The rights of press freedom are not absolute."

"Whatever the faith, we must respect it."

Both Yudhoyono and Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, while condemning the cartoons, have also spoken out against violence over the issue.

The Malaysian leader said on Friday killers of innocent people do not speak for Islam and those who invade and occupy someone else’s land do not speak for the West.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also condemned the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad as "provocative and wrong", the Straits Times newspaper said.

"We would not have allowed it in Singapore," Lee said. "In a multiracial society, we must respect one another’s religions, and not deliberately insult or desecrate what others hold sacred."

(Additional reporting in Jakarta by Ade Rina and Jerry Norton)