Published: 28 September 2012
Country: Egypt
An Egyptian newspaper has responded to the French magazine’s cartoons mocking Prophet Muhammad by publishing its own cartoons. Under the slogan “Fight cartoons with cartoons”, Egyptian secular newspaper Al-Watan said it was responding to the crude caricatures of the Parisian weekly Charlie Hebdo by publishing a series of sketches critiquing relations between Arab world and the West, reports Associated Press.
One of the Al-Watan cartoons, captioned “Western glasses for the Islamic World”, features a pair of eyeglasses framing the burning World Trade Center towers. Another drawing shows a flashlight wrapped in an American flag pointed at a picture of an angry turbaned man with a knife, ignoring a peaceful Muslim.
According to the BBC Arabic report, the cartoons published in Egyptian newspaper included one showing a white man accusing an angry, bearded man of being a terrorist until he sees he is from Israel and offers him a flower instead.
Readers of al-Watan, which is critical of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood of President Mohammed Mursi, reacted positively to the supplement, with some leaving comments on its website praising the idea of confronting “thought with thought” and thanking the paper for its “civilised response,” reports BBC.
Mohamed El Barguti, an editor at Al Watan, told The Associated Press that the cartoons were a “model of a civilized reaction to all that has happened” and that “burning and killing” is not the proper response to insults to Islam.
French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons played on the uproar over a video “Innocence of Muslims” which has sparked the violent protests across the Muslim world. Some 50 people have died in the protest erupted two weeks ago.