The University of Prince Edward Island’s student newspaper Le Cadre sparked off its own controversy yesterday by publishing the 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, originally printed in a Danish newspaper, which have inspired violent protests throughout the Muslim world.
Campus authorities immediately removed the 2,000 published copies from campus, although the issue is still online at cadre.upei.ca/files/cadrecurrentissue.pdf.
“We’re not in the business of deliberately inviting people to be insulted to the point of causing an outrage,” stated university President Wade McLaughlin.
He argued that the publication of the cartoons on the UPEI campus is “an invitation to trouble.” The P.E.I. Muslim Association did not request the removal of the paper from campus, saying that they cannot control what people print.
“I’m not entirely sure everyone understands the issue at hand,” said Cadre staff reporter Andre Bulman on the paper’s online message board. He argued that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten did not publish the cartoons, which depict Mohammed as a terrorist, with racist intentions.
Instead, the purpose of the drawing was to demonstrate the difficulties inherent in finding an artist who would satirize the Muslim prophet.
“The staff of the Cadre very much understood this issue,” said Bulman. He complained that the UPEI administration’s decision to remove the paper from campus reflected a fear of any form of criticism.
“It is clear that the administration is frightened by the idea of negative feedback and is therefore more concerned with image than freedom of the press.”
The publication of the cartoons in The Cadre and the UPEI administration’s decision to remove the images from campus has divided the student body. UPEI student Alan Trainor responded to Bulman’s justification of The Cadre’s actions with an angry rebuttal.
“You obviously think it’s cool or has journalistic value in publishing this crap,” said Trainor. “If you look at the professional news agencies of North America, they are not showing these pictures for a good reason.”
While many students at UPEI appear to share this opinion, others argued that students should have the opportunity to view the cartoons that have inspired such widespread outrage.
Cadre Editor-in-Chief Ray Keating defended the paper’s publication of the cartoons in an accompanying editorial that advocated the necessity of full press freedoms. He compared any limits on the freedom of journalists to publish what they choose to the actions of the dictators of the Second World War.
“If you think back about recent history, a whole host of dictators have made attempts to curtail freedoms of the people. Our own fathers and grandfathers fought and died to prevent Hitler from spreading his evil beyond Germany; should we allow a group of religious extremists to dishonour their memory?”
