November 22, 2008
REPORTING FROM BEIRUT
Embassy fires set in protest
Demonstrators burn Danish and Norwegian buildings in Syria as Muslim world erupts over European cartoons of prophet Muhammad
FURY: Protesters outside the Danish mission in Beirut. Muslims also cut a violent path through a predominantly Christian area. (AP)
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Thousands of protesters set fire yesterday to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria as outrage over satirical cartoons of the prophet Muhammad continued to spread across the Muslim world.
A peaceful demonstration outside the Danish Embassy in Damascus, the Syrian capital, quickly turned violent. Chanting "God is great," protesters broke through police barricades, stormed into the embassy, burned the Danish flag and replaced it with a green flag that read: "There is no God but God; and Muhammad is His messenger." Protesters threw papers and furniture out the windows and set fire to the building.
Shortly afterward, another group of demonstrators stormed the Norwegian Embassy in Damascus and set it on fire. Both embassies were closed during the attacks, and no one was injured in either blaze.
Both Denmark and Norway urged their citizens to leave Syria and demanded apologies from the Syrian government.
The protests in Damascus were the most violent of a series of demonstrations that began last week after European newspapers reprinted the cartoons lampooning Muhammad. The 12 caricatures - one of which depicts the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse - were published first in September in a Danish newspaper. The drawings were quickly condemned by clerics and Muslim governments as an insult to Islam, and they reinforced a widespread notion among Muslim masses that Europeans have no qualms about denigrating Islam.
European and Muslim officials are worried that the widening anger could help fuel new attacks by Islamic militants against Western targets. The controversy also comes at a time when relations between the West and the Muslim world are particularly strained over two issues: the victory of the militant group Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections and a showdown with Iran over its nuclear research program.
In recent days, some clerics and militant Islamic leaders have called for bloodshed against the West. At a demonstration organized by Hamas on Friday, tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Gaza, some of them chanting: "Those responsible should have their hands cut off."
One Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, told an Italian newspaper: "We should have killed all those who offend the prophet, but instead here we are, protesting peacefully."
In its first public statement on the controversy, the Vatican yesterday deplored the widening violence, but it said some types of criticism could be an "unacceptable provocation." The statement added, "The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
To prevent idolatry, Islamic law forbids any visual depictions of Muhammad and other major religious figures.
While much of the anger had focused initially on Denmark, it has spread to other European countries as the cartoons were reprinted.
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