– Cartoon Wars

Cartoon wars
Phil Kemp

MegaStar says: "Protests and placards as row rages"

The ongoing row in the wake of the controversial Danish cartoons continues to fill the tabloids.

The Sun runs with the snap of student Omar Khayam, from Bedford, who was pictured "dressed as a suicide bomber during hate-filled demos" in London, where

Muslim extremists were protesting against the publication in Denmark of the cartoons which depicted the Prophet Mohammed.

There are calls in the Sun for police to arrest the student ("Nick Him," goes the paper's headline). Khayam is quoted in the same paper confirming he took part in the protest but claiming he had "done nothing wrong", and "easn't trying to appear like a terrorist at all."

On the Sun's pages four and five, Kim Beer, mother of Phil Beer, one of the 52 victims of the July 7 London bombings, expresses her disgust at the extremists' protests, condemning them as "a vile insult to victims' memory".

Muslim journalist Anila Baig also slams the protests on the streets of London by extremists, saying the placards insulted not just the West but the vast majority of "law-abiding Muslims" too.

The Sun calls for the placard-wielders to be named.

In the Daily Mirror, Tony Parsons argues that "Islam is offended...well, so are we".

The writer says he is offended to "the core of my being" by the "gloating about 9/11 and 7/7", and the fact no protestors have been arrested for "these sickening incitement to murder".

Parsons adds that he "can't think of anything more likely to create real loathing for Muslims. I can't think of anything more likely to make the BNP a real force in British politics".