The British National Party (BNP) has distributed a leaflet including one of the 12 Mohammed cartoons, originally published in Danish paper Jyllands Posten, that have caused outrage amongst Muslims worldwide. In the pamphlet the cartoon was displayed next to a photograph of Muslim demonstrators calling for violent punishment of the cartoonists who authored the images.

500 000 copies of the pamphlet have been distributed across the UK.

A spokesman for the BNP explained the thinking behind the leaflet as follows: "What the leaflet says is which do you find most offensive? The cartoon or Muslim demonstrators calling for terrorist attacks on Europe?"

Labour party chairman Ian MC Cartney has condemned the pamphlets, stating they are "straight out of the Nazi textbook." While Faiz Siddiqi, of the Muslim Action Committee, commented: "Quite clearly the BNP wants to stay in the framework of continuing to cause offence. They are not interested in dialogue, only chaos."

Nick Griffin, head of the BNP, asserts that the publication of the Mohammed cartoon is a reaction against the decision of the British press not to publish the cartoons.

It is evident, however, that the BNP's decision to publish this cartoon is not a promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, the reasoning behind the reprinting of the cartoons by many newspapers. Nick Griffin is to be tried on race hate charges in October, along with other BNP activists.

For this reasoning the Editors Weblog denounces the BNP's politically manipulative decision to print the Mohammed cartoon.

Source: Times Online