Now here's something you don't see every day: the European media refusing to pander to the demands of Muslims:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060201/ap_on_re_eu/prophet_drawings_2

First it was a Danish newspaper editor who outraged Muslims everywhere in September with his decision to publish 12 caricatures of the Prohet Muhammad (one of these has him telling Muslims that Paradise is running out of virgins for suicide bombers). According to the Associated Press, the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published the drawings as a challenge to "what it perceived was self-censorship among artists dealing with Islamic issues."

Well, good for them! The response from the Islamic world has been predictable in its violence denunciation, and equally predictably there has been the usual handwringing from Western apologists (chastising the Press for hurting the feelings of Muslims). But what I wasn't expecting was for the French - of all people - to come out and defy the Muslim world. In republishing the offending images, the editor of the French newspaper Soir has declared that "no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society."

Formidable, Le Soir!!