Islamic group warns of 'bigger conflict' over Denmark cartoon

ISTANBUL - The Organization of the Islamic Conference denounced Friday the reprinting of a Danish cartoon of the prophet Mohammed, warning it could lead to confrontations between Muslims and Christians.
"By reprinting these cartoons we are heading toward a bigger conflict and that shows that both sides will be hostages of their radicals," OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a Turk, told AFP in Istanbul.
"It is not a way of improving your rights and exercising your freedoms when you use these rights for insulting the most sacred values and symbols of others and inciting hatred," he said. "This is a very wrong, provocative way -- unacceptable."
Several Danish newspapers on Wednesday republished one of 12 drawings, which had already caused bloody riots in the Muslim world in 2006, after police uncovered an alleged plot in the Scandinavian country to kill the cartoonist.
"The people who are doing this put themselves with the radicals, the fanatics and extremists who are using their beliefs as justification to hurt others," Ihsanoglu said. "This is not the way to improve relations between East and West, between Islam and Christianity."
The drawing, which depicts Mohammed with a turban resembling a bomb with a lit fuse, triggered fresh uproar in Muslim countries.
The Jeddah-based OIC is the world's largest pan-Islamic body, with 57 members.

Agence France-Presse