Grand sheik calls for Muhammad cartoonist's arrest
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Egypt's top Islamic leader said that the Danish editor who first published the contentious Prophet Muhammad cartoons should be jailed and his newspaper banned, according to an interview published Friday.
Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the grand sheik of Al-Azhar, one of the most powerful Islamic institutions in the Sunni Muslim world, said that Muslims still haven't forgotten the cartoons, which triggered a global firestorm earlier this year, Danish daily Berlingske Tidende reported.
"This was a really big crime," Tantawi was quoted as saying. "So the punishment should be to sentence the editor to prison for a number of years. And in addition to ban the paper from publication for some years."
"You can use your freedom of the press to attack people like me or presidents or royals. We can defend ourselves. But Jesus and Muhammad cannot, and anyone who attacks them must be punished for what he has done," Tantawi said.