LONDON, February 3, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With British media shying away from further fueling Muslims' fury, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Friday, February 3, called the decision by certain media to reproduce cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed "insulting", "insensitive", "disrespectful" and "wrong".

"There is freedom of speech, we all respect that," Straw told a press conference in London with Sudan's visiting foreign minister, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"But there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory," he said.

"I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been insulting, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong."

Straw also praised the British media for showing "considerable responsibility and sensitivity" in its approach to the issue.

The British press opted against reprinting the pictures, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper last September and have prompted demonstrations by Muslims across the world, particularly after they were reproduced in many European papers this week.

In editorials, British newspapers debated Friday the conflict between upholding free speech and the uproar any publication of the cartoons would cause.

Even Britain's normally "provocative" newspapers have refused to publish the cartoons that have outraged the Muslim world, prompting some commentators to question whether they have become too politically correct, according to Reuters.

The best-selling tabloid Sun said it had chosen not to print the cartoons out of respect for its Muslim readers while other papers said it was important not to inflame religious tensions in the country.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain welcomed the British press' stance and told Reuters he thought it showed a maturity that was sometimes lacking in European newspapers.

"Many Muslims do have complaints about the press here but it is noticeable that in the last 10 or 15 years (it) has shown a degree of improvement in the way it covers these kind of issues," he added.

The left-leaning Guardian newspaper, which printed a Web site address to the cartoons, said they wanted to give people the choice whether to look at the pictures or not.

"It is one thing to assert the right to publish an image of the prophet," the Guardian wrote in an editorial.

"It is another thing to put that right to the test, especially when to do so inevitably causes offence to many Muslims and, even more so, when there is currently such a powerful need to craft a more inclusive public culture."

"Freedom of satire which offends the feelings of others, and in this case the feelings of entire peoples, becomes an abuse of power," Silvestrini said.

Meanwhile, an Italian cardinal Friday called on the media to avoid satirizing sacred Muslim symbols like the "Noble Qur'an, Allah or the Prophet," saying to do so was an abuse of press freedoms.

"To be more precise, I would say that one can understand satire on a priest, but not on God.

"With reference to Islam, we can understand satire on the habits, customs or behavior (of Muslims) but not on the Koran, on Allah or on his Prophet" Muhammad, Cardinal Achille Silvestrini told the daily Corriere della Sera.

Silvestrini, 82, is a former prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches -- Christian churches in the Holy Land which recognize the Vatican.

"Freedom of satire which offends the feelings of others, and in this case the feelings of entire peoples, becomes an abuse of power," the cardinal said.

Asked by the paper if the Muslim world should learn the principles of tolerance in Western society, the cardinal said "we too must learn the experience of others."

He said one such example was "the cohabitation that Christians and Muslims have had for centuries in the Middle East."

The Vatican has made no official comment on the crisis, sparked when a Danish newspaper published 12 caricatures depicting the prophet.

In France, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said there was a need to uphold both "freedom" and "respect", while Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy voiced "shock" at the "violence" of some of the Muslim reactions to the sketches.

France wishes "to avoid anything that is unnecessarily hurtful, especially in the field of religious beliefs," Villepin told a press conference in the eastern city of Troyes.

Douste-Blazy, meanwhile, warned against any further "escalation", in an interview with French news channel LCI, saying it was "not right to caricature an entire religion as an extremist -- even terrorist -- movement."

Also read:

• Danish Muslims Urge Calm After Apology

• Danish Paper Apologizes for Cartoons