ADL Issues Statement in Response to Cartoon Controversy

February 2, 2006

Source: ADL Press Release

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASInt_13/4858_13.htm

On February 2, 2006 an ADL Press Release reported, "The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued the following statement in response to the controversy stemming from the twelve cartoons depicting Mohammed featured in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and reprinted in other European newspapers:

ADL is opposed to religious, racial and ethnic stereotyping in the media. We found some of the cartoons in Jyllands-Posten troubling, particularly the direct linkage of Mohammad and violence.

At the same time, we are gravely concerned by the extreme violent reaction these cartoons have generated in Muslim communities in Europe, and particularly in the Middle East. It is certainly the right of individuals and governments to express their disagreement with these depictions. However, the use of violence, threats, boycotts and other extreme reactions are highly inappropriate and bode ill for future debates involving Islam, democracy and free speech.

What has been overlooked in the controversy is the fact that despicable anti-Jewish caricatures appear daily in newspapers across the Arab and Muslim world... One would hope that leaders of Arab and Muslim countries would turn all of the anger being aimed at the European press into a larger lesson for their own people about the power of images."