Iran's biggest-selling newspaper has chosen to tackle the West's ideals of "freedom of expression" by launching a competition to find the 12 "best" cartoons about the Holocaust, the Associated French Press reported on Monday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Photo: AP [file]
Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor for Tehran's Hamshahri newspaper, said that the deliberately inflammatory contest would test out how committed Europeans were to the concept freedom of expression.
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"The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he said.
Iran has withdrawn its ambassador to Denmark and has said it plans to review trade ties with all countries where the cartoons were published.
Protests, some violent, swirled through the Muslim world Monday while politicians sought diplomatic solutions to the growing and increasingly violent crisis surrounding published caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Four protesters were killed in Afghanistan.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made comments about the Holocaust over the past few months, including suggestions that European countries give Jews some of their land in order to solve the Palestinian problem.
"If your newspapers are free why do not they publish anything about the innocence of the Palestinians and protest against the crimes committed by the Zionists?" the Mehr news agency recently quoted him as saying.
