Cartoon Controversy Spills Over to U.S. Colleges
The controversy over the reprinting of cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad continues to spread, spilling over to the campuses of colleges and universities in America.
The controversy over the reprinting of cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad continues to spread, spilling over to the campuses of colleges and universities in America.
As thousands of Muslims worldwide have protested, sometimes violently, against the drawings after they were published in a Danish newspaper in September and then in other papers in Europe more recently, some U.S. college campuses have also seen their share of cartoon publications and demonstrations.
Irvine, California
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At the University of California in Irvine (UCI), hundreds of Muslim students, many wearing green armbands, placed mats on the barricaded street and said a prayer on Tuesday, as they protested against plans to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-laden turban.
"The agenda is to spread Islamophobia and create hysteria against Muslims similar to what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany," said Osman Umarji, former president of the Muslim Student Union at UCI, according to the Associated Press. "Freedom of speech has its limits."
Organizers, however, said unveiling the cartoons was part of a larger debate on Islamic extremism sponsored by the College Republicans and The United American Committee, a fledgling group not affiliated with UCI.
Brock Hill, vice president of the College Republicans, told AP his group had a right to display the cartoons under the First Amendment and noted that the panel was to include a representative from the Free Muslims Coalition.
"We're not going against Islam whatsoever," he said. "This is about free speech and the free marketplace of ideas."
The panel also was to discuss anti-Semitic and anti-Western drawings that have appeared in Middle Eastern newspapers and discuss Islamic militancy on U.S. college campuses, said Jesse Petrilla, 22, a Glendale Community College student and UAC founder.
Petrilla told AP that he believes Muslims overseas are using the prophet drawings as an excuse to commit violence against Western nations.
"We're hoping to bring light to the subject and get people talking about it," he said. "People don't realize it's not just the cartoons
