Paper seeks Holocaust cartoons

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, February 7, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran – A prominent Iranian newspaper said it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

Hamshahri, one of Iran’s largest papers, made clear the contest is a reaction to European newspapers’ publication of Danish cartoons of Muhammad.

Hamshahri invited foreign cartoonists to enter the competition, which it said would be launched Monday.

“Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?” Hamshahri wrote, referring to the cartoons of Muhammad, first published in a Danish newspaper in September.

As Muslim protests mounted at European embassies across the Islamic world, numerous European newspapers have reprinted the cartoons in the name of free expression, provoking wider and angrier protests.