Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Malaysia has slapped a blanket ban on circulating or even possessing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad after it closed a local newspaper for printing the same caricatures that have enraged the Islamic world.
In a short statement confirming its order to shut down the Sarawak Tribune, the government of mainly-Muslim Malaysia said it had issued the ban to ensure racial harmony.
It is now an offence to publish, import, produce, manufacture, circulate, distribute or possess caricatures that may "jeopardize public harmony and safety, which may cause chaos, or endanger public peace or national interest," it said.
The Sarawak Tribune blamed a non-Muslim editor's "oversight" for its publication last weekend of the caricatures that sparked violent protests in parts of the Muslim world.
The incident embarrassed Malaysia's government, headed by an Islamic scholar who also currently chairs the world's largest grouping of Islamic nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The Sarawak Tribune is published in Malaysia's eastern state of Sarawak on the jungle-clad island of Borneo. It is one of the few Malaysian states where Muslims are in a minority.
The government has suspended the paper's publishing license pending the outcome of an investigation by the Internal Security Ministry, but it is unclear if the Tribune will ever reopen, even when the suspension order is lifted.
"There may not be a Sarawak Tribune anymore," the daily's editorial advisor, Idris Buang, told local media.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, police were questioning an editor after his tabloid, Peta, published a caricature of the Prophet."The PETA chief editor was named a suspect since yesterday. We have been investigating him for the past three days. He has not been detained yet," Kusdiyanto said.
"He is named a suspect for publishing the prophet cartoon."
Kusdiyanto declined to specify what statutes might be involved but the Jakarta Post newspaper said an article on religious blasphemy applied, which carried a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Thursday in a speech marking his country's national press day: "We must take a lesson from the publication in a Danish newspaper. The rights of press freedom are not absolute."
"Whatever the faith, we must respect it."
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also condemned the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad as "provocative and wrong," the Straits Times newspaper said.
"We would not have allowed it in Singapore," Lee said. "In a multiracial society, we must respect one another's religions, and not deliberately insult or desecrate what others hold sacred."
The Danish newspaper editor who commissioned the cartoons was sent on holiday after suggesting he would print Iranian cartoons on the Holocaust.
The protests on Friday over the drawings first published in a Danish newspaper showed no sign of easing, but there was no repeat of the violence that has so far left 13 people dead worldwide in rallies against the cartoons.
In Malaysia, where Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was hosting an international conference on Islam, between 2,000 and 3,000 protesters marched on the Danish embassy chanting "God is great!"
"There is definitely something rotten in the state of Denmark," said Hatta Ramli from the opposition Pan-Malaysia Islamic party.
Abdullah told Muslim leaders and scholars that Western nations wanted to control the world's oil and gas, and blamed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the establishment of Israel, for a rift with the West.
"They think Osama bin Laden speaks for the religion and its followers. Islam and Muslims are linked to all that is negative and backward," said Abdullah.
"The demonisation of Islam and the vilification of Muslims, there is no denying, is widespread within mainstream Western society," he said, adding that there was a "huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam."
Meanwhile nearly 20,000 people took to the streets to protest the cartoons in Bangladesh, where Prime Minister Khaleda Zia called for an apology for the "extremely arrogant" drawings.
Protesters in Dhaka fought with police and tried to break through to the city's diplomatic enclave, but were pushed back. The demonstrators threatened to besiege parliament if lawmakers failed to adopt a unanimous resolution condemning the cartoons.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia demanded an apology from the Danish government, but urged protesters to refrain from violence.
The cartoons, he said, have "hurt the feelings of Muslims all over the world. So, we expect regret and apology immediately from the appropriate level for this act."
"We have firm faith in freedom of speech ... but all should remain conscious about their responsibility so this freedom does not hurt anyone's sentiment, faith (and) dignity," she said.
Mohiuddin Ahmed, leader of the Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir, which organised the biggest demonstration in Dhaka, said: "The cartoons are part of the West's crusade against Islam. No Muslim can tolerate these cartoons."
In India, thousands of Muslims shouting "Denmark Die, Die!" burnt Danish flags in the streets of New Delhi after prayers at the country's largest mosque.
"Islam and Muslims have been challenged," said the mosque's chief cleric, Ahmed Bukhari, who called on the Indian government to demand an apology from Denmark.
"For 1,400 years, Islam has fought its evil enemies and now it will not bow before the Satanic designs of France, Germany, Norway and Denmark," he said, citing some of the other countries where the drawings have appeared.
Protesters spat on giant Danish flags which were spread on the ground outside the 17th-century Jama Masjid mosque.
In Afghanistan, about 300 men, some armed with large wooden sticks, marched through the capital Kabul after Friday prayers after a week of similar protests left at least 11 people dead.
Muslim leaders in the predominately Roman Catholic Philippines urged restraint as a group of 200 Muslims staged a rally outside a mosque in the capital Manila to denounce the cartoons.
In Pakistan thousands of Islamic hardliners protesting against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed torched Danish and US flags in the largest rally in the Pakistani capital since the controversy began.
"Crush Denmark, crush America", chanted around 4,000 protesters in Islamabad as they burned an effigy of US President George W. Bush amid ongoing anger throughout the Muslim world at the caricatures.
One protester was injured in another demonstration in the northwestern city of Peshawar when he was hit by a tear gas shell, and smaller rallies were held in the cities of Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Multan.
Police maintained a heavy presence as the protesters in Islamabad marched from a mosque after traditional Friday prayers to the capital's main commercial centre.
An alliance of six Islamic parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (MMA) organised the Islamabad protest.
"We are able to destroy the Danish embassy but we will not do it. We are peace-loving people and our religion does not allow violence," local MMA leader and legislator Mian Aslam told the rally.
The politician asked the government to sever relations with the countries where the caricatures have appeared, and demanded an apology from those countries.
Meanwhile the Islamist-ruled government in North West Frontier Province bordering
Afghanistan said it had imposed a ban on products from the countries where the cartoons were published.
"The provincial government has decided to ban products of all those countries where the caricatures were published," senior provincial minister Sirajul Haq told reporters in Peshawar.
"The ban will remain until all these countries tender apologies," he added.
Police fired tear gas shells when some religious party activists hurled stones at shops in Peshawar's University Road. One protester was injured when a tear gas shell hit him, hospital officials said.
It was one of several rallies held in Peshawar involving hundreds of protesters.
A meeting held in the historic Qissa Khani Bazaar was addressed by a hardline Jamatud Dawa party leader, Abu Hijrat, who said: "Jihad is the only option left to Muslims to prevent non-Muslims from committing such acts."
Religious parties also staged noisy demonstrations in the eastern city of Lahore and burned Danish, French and Norwegian flags.
Several hundred youths from the fundamentalist Jamiat Ulema-i Pakistan party gathered outside the local press club building facing the US consulate, witnesses said.
There were also about half a dozen smaller protests in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. Demonstrators burned flags and effigies of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and chanted anti-Denmark and anti-US slogans before dispersing peacefully.
Hundreds of people including students at controversial madrassas held three demonstrations in the central city of Multan chanting slogans against Denmark, Norway and France.
Hardliners also marched through the southwestern city of Quetta.
Protesters also took to the streets in Sri Lanka, Turkey and Jordan.
Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad which has carried out several suicide bombings in Israel, threatened violence.
"So far we have demanded an apology from the governments. But if they continue their assault on our dear Prophet Mohammad, we will burn the ground underneath their feet," Islamic Jihad leader Khader Habib told supporters after Friday prayers.
Tens of thousands of Muslims have demonstrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa over the cartoons first published in Denmark, then other countries in Europe and elsewhere.
One cartoon showed the Prophet Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any portrayal of the Prophet blasphemous, let alone one showing him as a terrorist.
In Tehran, where protesters this week pelted the Danish embassy with petrol bombs, a senior cleric said Iran's arch enemy the United States was behind the trouble.
"The anger shown by Muslims is a holy anger," Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers. "But I am calling on religious men not to attack foreign embassies ... They want their embassies set on fire so they can say they are innocent. Take this excuse away from them."
CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS?
The Danish government has expressed regret over the publication of the cartoons, but has refused to apologise saying that is a matter for the newspaper.
As well as worldwide protests, the cartoons have ignited a debate over the limits of freedom of speech and exposed the gulf of misunderstanding between the Western and Islamic worlds.
"We're dealing with two types of ignorance, about Islam and about the freedom of speech," said Sohaib Bencheikh, a prominent Islamic theologian in France.
"We're paying the bill for September 11 and all the tension and misunderstanding that arose after it," complained Mohammad Bechari, head of the National Federation of French Muslims.
He criticised protesters who demanded the Danish government apologise for the cartoons. "Frankly, that shows that the idea of genuine free speech has not taken root in Muslim countries."
Rachid Benzine, a leading young French Muslim intellectual, bemoaned the fact the protesting Arabs thought their faith gave them the right to use violence when they were offended.
"We're witnessing the theologisation of international relations," he said. "Some say we're heading towards a clash of civilisations, but it's more like a clash of ignorances on both sides. How can we get out of this spiral?"