OIC slams Denmark over failure to condemn cartoons of prophet
OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the response by the Danish authorities "was highly unsatisfactory ... issued after procrastination of over three months and was unable to reach the underlying reasons on which the Muslims were anguished."
Twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, published in Jyllands-Posten daily last September and reprinted in a Norwegian magazine earlier this month, sparked uproar in the Muslim world since images of the prophet are considered blasphemous.
"The angry reaction in the Muslim world... is mainly due to the premeditated and deliberate attack on the revered person of the prophet, whose holy position, message and teachings were maliciously and calculatingly sacrileged by the so called defenders of freedom," Ihsanoglu said in a statement.
The chief of the pan-Islamic body also casted doubt over the viability of the dialogue between religions in the light of what he described as the silence of the Vatican over the issue.
"We have received nothing in terms of the Vatican's position, which was keen on the dialogue between religions," he told reporters in a later press conference.
"If this dialogue is not concerned firstly about respecting prophets, there is no point in continuing it," he said.
He also defended the right of Muslims to boycott Danish products.
"If the Danes have the right to express (their views freely), Muslims have the right to buy Danish goods or not," he said.
The publication of the cartoons provoked strong reactions in Muslim countries where consumers turned their back to Danish products amid calls demanding the Danish government to apologise.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in October refused to agree to a meeting requested by 11 ambassadors of Muslim nations to discuss the controversy.
Rasmussen upheld freedom of expression as a fundamental human right but condemned any action "which tries to demonise certain groups due to their religious or ethnic background".