Doodle wars

Egyptian cartoonists fight fire with fire

Al Watan responds to French cartoons mocking Muhammad with some mocking the West

26 September 2012, 10:31 pm

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Egyptian cartoonist Khalid Abdul-Ati from the Egyptian Al Watan daily newspaper works on a cartoon depicting an Islamic figure inside his office at the newspaper's headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday. (photo credit: AP/Nasser Nasser)

CAIRO (AP) — Amid outrage sparked by perceived insults to Islam, one Egyptian newspaper has decided to fight cartoons with cartoons.

Al Watan daily says it is responding to the crude caricatures published last week by a satirical Parisian weekly in kind: a series of sketches critiquing relations between the Arab world and the West.

The paper says they are a “civilized” alternative to the violent protests across the Muslim world sparked by a low-budget anti-Islam film produced in the United States.

“Nothing cracks cartoons but cartoons,” said the banner splashed over the two-page spread published this week.

One drawing, captioned “Western glasses for the Islamic world,” features a pair of eyeglasses framing the burning World Trade Center towers. Another shows a flashlight wrapped in an American flag pointed at a picture of an angry turbaned man with a knife, ignoring a peaceful Muslim.

Egyptian cartoonist Abdul-Rahman Najmuddin walks past cartoon sketches, one depicting Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi with a caption in Arabic "someone calls home and tell them that I am delivering a speech," at Al Watan daily newspaper headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday. (photo credit: AP/Nasser Nasser) — Egyptian cartoonist Abdul-Rahman Najmuddin walks past cartoon sketches, one depicting Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi with a caption in Arabic “someone calls home and tell them that I am delivering a speech,” at Al Watan daily newspaper headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday. (photo credit: AP/Nasser Nasser)

Both seem intended to suggest that the only image seen by Western audiences of the Muslim world was that of terrorism.

The newspaper’s decision comes amid a debate over freedom of expression in both Muslim and Western countries over the reaction to the film “Innocence of Muslims.” Over 50 people have been killed in violence linked to the video over the past two weeks. In Egypt, protesters breached the U.S. Embassy.

Last week, the provocative French magazine Charlie Hebdo published a set of crude cartoons playing off the film and ridiculing the violent reaction to it.

Egyptian cartoonist Khalid Abdul-Ati holds a copy of the Egyptian Al Watan daily newspaper with a two-page spread of cartoons with a headline in Arabic that reads “nothing cracks cartoons but cartoons,” at the newspaper's headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, on Wednesday. (photo credit: AP/Nasser Nasser) — Egyptian cartoonist Khalid Abdul-Ati holds a copy of the Egyptian Al Watan daily newspaper with a two-page spread of cartoons with a headline in Arabic that reads “nothing cracks cartoons but cartoons,” at the newspaper’s headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, on Wednesday. (photo credit: AP/Nasser Nasser)

President Barack Obama and other Western officials have condemned the film, but said that no speech justifies the violent response.

Mohamed El Barguti, an editor at Al Watan, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the cartoons were a “model of a civilized reaction to all that has happened.” The paper published the drawings to show that “burning and killing” is not the proper response to insults to Islam, he said.