Ammar Amonette says images of the prophet Muhammad drawn by a Danish cartoonist and published in several newspapers around the globe are a grotesque depiction of the Islamic faith and the Muslim people.
“We are supposed to respect other people’s religions,” Amonette, a Colorado Muslim Society imam, said Thursday, “but some people don’t do that. They are sometimes very hateful.”
One of the cartoons – first published five months ago by a newspaper in Denmark – shows Muhammad wearing a turban that is fashioned into a bomb.
The Colorado Muslim Council is meeting today to address community concerns about the local publication of the cartoons.
Amonette is not interested in a protest because the issue has had enough attention, but an interfaith response in the form of a letter to publications is under consideration, he said.
The images of Muhammad depicted in the cartoons are often the only exposure Americans and other Westerners have to Islam, Amonette said.
“They don’t know everything about Islam, and this is what they are going to get,” he said.
In Denver, one cartoon was published on the editorial page of the Rocky Mountain News on Tuesday. The online versions of the News and The Denver Post have links to Web pages containing some of the cartoons.
While some Muslims have refused to look at the cartoons, others want to see them so they can denounce them.
“I don’t intend to look at them because I consider them a disrespect to my faith,” said Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni, a Shiite cleric. “The general view within the Muslim community is to stay away from these pictures.”
Islam forbids depicting Muhammad or any other prophet in an image because it is considered idolatry, unlike Christians who worship Jesus on the cross.
“It’s like a middle finger up to the Muslim community,” Kazerooni said.
Rima Barakat, a Denver Muslim, wants to organize some kind of opposition to the cartoons.
“It is insulting to give a Hindu person a present made of cowhide,” she said. “You are not just stabbing them in the heart, you are twisting the knife. Why would people want to continue sticking the knife and turning it when it comes to the Muslim faith?”
Medhat Ahmed, co-president of the Muslim Student Association at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says he’s seen only one cartoon but wants to see more to find out how offensive they are.
He worries that some people will see Muslims and Arabs as terrorists because of these images.
“That is not what Islam is about,” Ahmed said.
Kazerooni said he understood that the press has freedom to publish the cartoons but said there are moral limitations to those freedoms.
“You do not go around making caricatures of African-American slavery,” Kazerooni said. “… Why, when it comes to Muslims, why do we not extend this courtesy?”
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-820-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
