Pakistan and Turkey condemned publication of the satirical drawings of the prophet Muhammad, originally published in a Danish newspaper. Underlining the extent of the international divide over the issue, the German government pointedly defended the right of papers across Europe to publish the cartoons, including four in Germany. But the British government, in an unusual divergence from the rest of Europe on such issues, sided with Pakistan and Turkey.

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The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was quoted in the Turkish press saying: “Caricatures of prophet Muhammad are an attack against our spiritual values. There should be a limit of freedom of press.”

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, denounced the decision to republish the cartoons, saying press freedom carried an obligation not “to be gratuitously inflammatory”. Mr Straw, at a press conference in London, said that while he was committed to press freedom, “I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been insulting, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong”. He praised the British press, which up to yesterday had not published the cartoons, for showing “considerable responsibility and sensitivity”.

By contrast, Wolfgang Schauble, the German home minister, defended the decision by four German newspapers to publish the cartoons: “Why should the German government apologise? This is an expression of press freedom.” ~The Guardian

Via Andrew Stuttaford.

I’m sorry that I haven’t weighed in one the side of my Danish and German cousins before now (Larison is, in case you didn’t know, a Danish name, and I have German ancestors on my father’s side), and I have to give Frau Merkel’s government some credit for not capitulating to intimidation from Muslims and her preciously multiculti fellow Europeans.

Schaeuble has it right, and Erdogan reveals still one more reason why Turkey should not be allowed to join the EU. His “spiritual values” and the political values of Europe do not mesh, and never will, unless Europe’s political values change drastically and quickly. Erdogan has just shown what a more democratic Turkey means for Europe, which is an AK Islamist government that by definition cannot be committed to the same “values” that Europeans across the spectrum share. Of course, our allies, the British, are predictably in full multiculti meltdown, having been sufficiently Mau-Maued by the July 7 bombings that they would not dream of doing the least offensive thing to provoke their Muslims.

Two things are at stake here in this controversy: whether European “hate speech” restrictions are going to become even more strict and oppressive than they already are, and whether the political norms of European countries are going to be dictated by Muslim immigrants and our so-called allies in the Islamic world. In a free society, the offended Muslims would be able to protest these cartoons to their hearts’ content in writing, organise boycotts and hold protests, but inciting or threatening violence or insisting on government censorship are not the responses of citizens of a free society. Many of the protesters against these cartoons are demonstrating their fundamental incompatibility with free society and making the point of immigrant restrictionists both in Europe and here.