Morocco opens inquiry into newspaper that published Prophet cartoon.

"To have a debate about pornography you don't have to publish pornographic pictures. To have a debate about capital punishment you don't have to publish pictures of people swinging from the gallows. You can have a sensible discussion around this without publishing the images."

- The Sydney Morning Herald editor Alan Oakley

It is truly sad, though not unpredictable, the way this entire sorry mess has spiraled out of control. Some of the language being used in the world press and in the blogosphere is almost as damaging as the original publication of the cartoons. "A clash of civilisations." Not very civilised, in my mind to publish cartoons that will inflame already tense Islamic sensibilities. "A war of ideologies" - possibly true, but a "war"?

The scenes of embassy burnings and calls for beheadings are playing right into the hands of the Islamophobes who want to create as much friction from the situation as possible. At the moment the Islamaphobes have gathered a lot of support from the Islamic reaction. Calm heads are needed. Dialogue and connection are what is needed now, not more provocation.

Some bloggers are calling for calm, others for retribution and a great number are pushing the images as hard as they can. Spammers are into the act, posting links to sites offering readers the chance "to draw your own cartoon of the Prophet".

While some governments are playing the issue for their own domestic purposes, there are others reacting in a more responsible way - thankfully the Moroccan government is one of them.

Moroccan prosecutors have opened an inquiry into the country's only newspaper to have published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed, according to judicial sources.

The editor of Arab-language newspaper Annahar al Maghribia said that he was summoned on Saturday to police headquarters, along with another journalist from the daily, concerning the cartoon. Editor Abdelhakim Badiaa published a small cartoon of Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban on an inside page of his independent newspaper on Thursday. The drawing was used to illustrate the controversy sparked by the cartoons, which were first published in a Danish newspaper in September, and were not intended as an insult to the prophet, the editor said.

The newspaper criticised the controversial pictures when they were published in Denmark and printed two of them in October without any reaction from Moroccan authorities, Badiaa noted.

"I wonder why the police waited so long to summon me about the cartoons," he said. Badiaa said the Moroccan government and ulemas were reacting only now because of the uproar in other Middle Eastern countries and the United States over the issue.

The High Council of Ulemas of Morocco last Tuesday criticised the publication of the cartoons in European newspapers, saying they offended Muslim feelings. Moroccan Prime Minister Driss Jettou also denounced the drawings during a government meeting on Thursday.

Morocco has banned the sale of European newspapers in which the pictures have been published. The drawings, which first appeared in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper and were reprinted in Norway, France and other European countries, have sparked a wave of anger in Muslim countries, where flags have been burned, ambassadors recalled, European products boycotted and Scandinavians threatened with violence.

"Annahar al Maghribia has damaged the sacred values of Islam," a government official said Saturday on condition of anonymity.

Tags: Morocco Islam Cartoons Jyllands-Posten