Egypt: Thousands of students protest over cartoons

Several thousand students massed on the al-Azhar University campus in Cairo today to protest against publication of caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, part of a spreading and often violent string of demonstrations across the Muslim world.

The students at al-Azhar, the oldest and most important seat of Sunni Muslim learning in the world, carried banners decrying in the caricatures that first appeared in a Danish newspaper about four months ago and have since been published in several other countries as a show of support for freedom of expression.