Newspapers take a stand, support cartoonist under threat of death by extreme factions

Salman Rushdie introduced the world to radical Islam when a death threat was issued against him by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran. The threat not only extended to the author of The Satanic Verses, it also extended to his publisher. Recently, Ayaan Hirsi Ali experienced a similar threat, fleeing to America after her friend filmmaker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered on a city street in Amersterdam. Hirsi Ali and van Gogh collaborated on a film about violence against women in Islamic societies. Hirsi Ali didn’t pull any punches when she followed that with her best-selling memoir Infidel. At the present time, artist Kurt Westergaard has been forced into hiding after he received death threats because he drew a cartoon depicting Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb instead of a turban.

This sort of fanaticism makes an American incredulous, and it usually has the same effect on Europeans. But in Westergaard’s case, his home country Denmark isn’t going silent. Three newspapers in that country reprinted his cartoon in a show of solidarity.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to Westerners is getting across the concept of freedom of speech to those in countries governed and/or oppressed by fanatics. Solidarity in the press is a great place to start. I’ve read comments on some newspaper Web sites that question why a cartoon like this is published, knowing it may provoke violence. To an American that is a question more dangerous than the violence that might be provoked.

Media alert: Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer gets four years

This morning the Washington Post reports Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil, who writes under the pen name Kareem Amer, has been convicted of “insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak.” Nabil has been sentenced to four years in prison.

An advocacy blog,Free Kareem!, vows to continue to fight for the 22-year-old who attended Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic school. The blog says Nabil’s lawyers will launch an appeal on Saturday with hopes of at least shortening his sentence. The blog lists rallies to be held at Egyptian embassies around the world on Nabil’s behalf.

There’s a June, 2006, article, ‘SOS from an Egyptian blogger’ at Christian Science Monitor, explaining the perils bloggers face in Egypt. The article’s author goes by the pen name Sandmonkey to avoid the very circumstances confronting Nabil.

Sandmonkey says in the month before his article appeared in CSM, the American government criticized Egypt several times for “its treatment of protestors.”

Nothing strikes the core of a journalist more than seeing a fellow writer go to prison for expressing beliefs that harm no one. If Egypt continues to oppress those who are critical of Islam and the government, I hope our own media does what the U.S. State Department did.

We need to protest so loudly and so defiantly that Egypt takes notice: Free Kareem!