By: The student-run newspaper that serves the University of Illinois community on Thursday ran reprints of some of the cartoons whose publication has sparked outrage and violence in many parts of the Islamic world.
The Daily Illini, which is independent of the UI, ran only six of the 12 cartoons first published in September in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten, but led with the one that has caused the greatest furor: a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as part of his turban.
"I've been fielding calls all day, and there are a lot of e-mail messages, too," said Daily Illini editor-in-chief Acton H. Gorton. "The reaction has been both good and bad. The Muslim community is upset, and understandably so."
Gorton, 25, said he planned to meet with leaders of the local Muslim community late Thursday.
"Running the cartoons was primarily my own decision," he said. "It was something I felt strongly about."
In an accompanying editorial, Gorton wrote that he agreed the pictures could be seen as a violation of Islamic law and said he personally found them "bigoted and insensitive."
"By refusing to run the cartoons, Americans have no idea how `offensive' they are," he wrote. "The ensuing death threats, riots, murders and laying siege to embassies, leave most of us confused and appalled."
"If anything, journalists all over this country should be letting the public decide for themselves what to think of these cartoons," he added.
Since the initial publication in Denmark, media in France, Germany, the United States, Britain, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Greenland, Bulgaria, Portugal and Jordan have reprint the cartoons.
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