Gulf Muslims Step Up Danish Boycott Over Cartoons

The Arab News reports:

JEDDAH, 7 February 2006 — People in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries intensified their boycott of Danish goods as the uproar over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) raged unabated yesterday.

Scholars and regional trade groups also urged Muslims to use this economic weapon to punish other European nations whose dailies printed the inflammatory caricatures.

Yemen shut down a weekly newspaper yesterday for republishing the cartoons.

The official Saba news agency said Prime Minister Abdul Qader Ba-Jammal ordered the closure of the Al-Hurriya (Freedom) weekly after it reprinted four of the 12 drawings that originally appeared in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten daily last September.

The paper reproduced the cartoons on Feb. 2 as part of coverage on the protests and boycotts sparked by the drawings.

No word yet on whether the Arab News wants to comment on the popularity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Saudi Arabia.As you could probably guess the Protocols are printed without protest in the Arab world.