Kuwait boycotts Denmark over 'offensive' cartoons

Kuwait’s state-supported supermarkets today announced a boycott of Danish products, and the Foreign Ministry called in a regional Danish ambassador to protest at caricatures in a Danish newspaper that have been deemed insulting to Islam’s prophet.

Also Saturday, hundreds of Kuwaitis gathered in front of the Danish consulate holding banners and making speeches denouncing the drawings.

“How dare you!” read one sign. Othman al-Seif, a 22-year-old university student, said: “Economy is the most important thing. We are boycotting their goods ... we want them to feel the harm as people the same way they harmed our prophet.”

The 12 drawings – published in September last year by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten – included one showing Mohammed wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another portrayed him with a bushy grey beard and holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle. A third pictured a middle-aged prophet standing in the desert with a walking stick in front of a donkey and a sunset.

The caricatures have sparked a wave of denunciations across the Islamic world and from Muslim leaders in Denmark. Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet, even respectful ones, out of concern that such images could lead to idolatry.

Jyllands-Posten has refused to apologise for the drawings, citing freedom of speech.

Mohammed al-Mutairi, who heads Kuwait’s union of supermarkets, said managers would meet tomorrow to approve the boycott. He said some 275 Danish goods sold at these supermarkets are valued at 50 million dinars (£97 million) a year.

“There is almost unanimity there should be a boycott,” he told a gathering of angry lawmakers and university students at Parliament. “We will announce the boycott of Danish goods starting tomorrow.”

The Kuwait News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry official as saying Kuwait “strongly condemned” the drawings and has called the Danish ambassador in Saudi Arabia for a meeting here. There is no resident Danish ambassador in Kuwait.

Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark to protest at the drawings.

Today in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference criticised the Danish government for failing to deal with the issue in a “serious way.”

“The publication of the drawings cannot be considered freedom of speech,” Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told reporters.

The drawings were reprinted on January 10 by Norwegian evangelical newspaper Magazinet in the name of defending free expression, renewing Muslim anger.

Al-Ummah, Kuwait’s self-proclaimed only political party, said in a statement that the Danish and Norwegian governments should apologise to all Muslims.

A letter from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, published in the daily newspaper Aftenposten on Thursday, quotes Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere as saying that “I am sorry that the publications of the Prophet Mohammed in the Magazinet has caused unrest in the Muslim community.”