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Thousands protest Danish cartoons

* Malaysian PM warns of ‘chasm’ between Muslims and West

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s leader on Friday warned of a “huge chasm” between Muslims and the West, as thousands of people took to the streets for the largest demonstrations yet in Asia against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

Thousands of Muslims rallied in Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, while smaller demonstrations were held in Indonesia and the Philippines. Protesters shouted anti-American and other slogans and burned, stomped and spat on Danish flags. There were no immediate reports of violence. The demonstrations grew out of traditional Friday prayers. Some were held outside mosques while others involved crowds marching on the diplomatic missions of Denmark – the main target of Muslim ire because a newspaper there was the first to publish the cartoons.

In Kuala Lumpur, about 3,000 protesters marched from a mosque to the high-rise building housing the Danish Embassy shouting: “Long live Islam. Destroy Denmark. Destroy Israel. Destroy George Bush. Destroy America!”

Opening a conference at a nearby venue, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi talked of a “huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam”, particularly because of Muslim frustrations at Western policies toward Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinians. He said that many Westerners view a Muslim as “a congenital terrorist”.

“They think that Osama Bin Laden speaks for the religion and its followers,” Badawi said in his speech. “The demonisation of Islam and the vilification of Muslims, there is no denying, is widespread within mainstream Western society.”

He did not mention the cartoons. Badawi, a Muslim scholar whose country heads the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), also urged Muslims to oppose “sweeping denunciation of Christians, Jews and the West” as well as violence and terror perpetrated by fringe groups.

In Bangladesh, more than 5,000 Muslims, watched by hundreds of riot police, marched to the Danish Embassy in Dhaka, burning the country’s flag and shouting: “Death to those who degrade our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him)!”

Small demonstrations were also held in Indonesia, where protesters burned tires in one town. About 175 students at an Islamic school in the eastern Javanese city of Surabaya vowed to confront any Danes they met and ask for an apology for the cartoons, said their headmaster, Yusuf Muhajir. “They will be slapped if they refuse,” Muhajir said. “The slap is a merely intended as a lesson, instead of hurting them.”

Denmark earlier this week advised its citizens to leave Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, after its embassy was stormed by a mob and pelted with eggs.

In India, thousands of angry Muslims kicked, spat on and tore Danish flags and burned effigies in the capital, New Delhi, and in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir.

At a similar protest in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, demonstrators waved a banner that said: “Don’t ridicule our faith, press freedom in the gutter.” In the Philippines, hundreds of Muslims burned a mock Danish flag and demanded that the Danish newspaper that first published the caricatures be punished.

Malaysia’s Internal Security Ministry late on Thursday declared that it was an offence for anyone to publish, produce, import, circulate or possess the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) caricatures. It said that the measure was ordered to curb the circulation of material that could cause to disrupt public order in Malaysia. It did not specify what penalties offenders faced.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Friday that he considered the violent reactions to the cartoons “completely disproportionate to the offence that could possibly have been caused”. ap

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