In her Prague 6 office, Chimaa Youssef takes her first look at 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad on the Internet.

Like most people in the world, Youssef heard about the outcry against the images — in which tens of thousand of people throughout the Muslim world have staged protests and torched three embassies; in addition, at least 11 people have died during rioting — well before seeing the images for herself.

"Some lady was telling me there was some cartoon about the prophet, and then I started hearing about it more," said the Syria-born Muslim who lives with her Czech husband in Prague. "I was shocked, in fact, by the reaction of the people, because it is not ordinary."

The images, considered blasphemous to Muslims, were published first in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September and in a Norwegian paper in December. That got the ball rolling, and protests in the Muslim world increased throughout January as more than 40 publications throughout Europe — including four in the Czech Republic — published them in early February.

Youssef lingers over the pictures on the screen for several seconds before she reacts.

"They are just cartoons," she says. "I heard they were much worse."

Still, the 30-year-old Arabic teacher says she fears the images will contribute to the widening rift she sees between Muslims in the Czech Republic and the rest of the population.

"The two sides may not believe each other anymore," she says.

Newsworthy

So far, the Czech Republic has not seen the public fury other countries are dealing with. But the government has been on the defensive.

Iran demanded an apology from the Czech Foreign Affairs Ministry Feb. 10 for the publication of the images in the dailies Mladá fronta Dnes and Hodspodářské noviny.

The images also appeared in the weeklies Respekt and Týden.

The Iranian news agency Feb. 13 reported that Michal Černý, Czech charges d'affaires in Tehran, apologized for the cartoons, a claim he denies.

Foreign Affairs Minister Cyril Svoboda says the country will not apologize, and it is up to the newspapers to decide what they publish.

Throughout Europe, newspapers have defended the re-publication of the cartoons — which depict Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban in one cartoon, and telling dead suicide bombers entering heaven that it has run out of virgins in another — as a matter of free speech.

The Czech press lauded the minister's comments and defended its right to publish the images.

"We don't plan to apologize," says Viliam Buchert, deputy editor-in-chief of Mladá fronta Dnes. "Freedom of speech is essential. It doesn't mean we are in favor of disrespect."

But some members of the Muslim community say that publishing the images of Muhammad only gives the illusion of freedom.

"Some people say that the press can say whatever it wants," Hayssam Ibrahim, a Lebanon-born Muslim who lives in Prague. "But does somebody show anything about the Holocaust? Nobody dares to talk about that. Is that freedom or not?"

The leading state-run Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, announced a "deliberately inflammatory contest" Feb. 6, with the goal of collecting and publishing Holocaust cartoons.

European Union Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said Feb. 9 that the European media should consider adopting a voluntary code of conduct to avoid the cartoon uproar.

"It isn't a good idea," says Michal Musil, deputy editor-in-chief of Týden. "Any ethical code concerning minority or religious groups might, in the end, prove counterproductive. Censorship does not solve problems."

Nonresponse

After members of the Muslim community issued a joint statement Feb. 6 denouncing the Muhammad cartoons, Interior Minister František Bublan scheduled a meeting with them the following week, ostensibly to discuss the publication of the images in the Czech press.

"The meeting wasn't initiated by the cartoons, really," he said during a 19-minute press conference immediately following the Feb. 13 meeting.

"The meeting was to seek a model of living together that will avoid radicalization," said Vladimír Sáňka, head of the Islamic Center in Prague.

Bublan concluded, "The Muslim community is mainly happy with the politics here, but there are some signs of hatred from the public."

There are an estimated 10,000 Muslims in the Czech Republic, and many say they feel isolated from the rest of the country.

"I still feel like a foreigner and I always will." Ibrahim says. He has lived in the Czech Republic for 11 years. "Here, when there is no religion, nobody cares [about the feelings of Muslims]. People were just looking for something to talk about."

A little education

Youssef says that on the whole, people in the Czech Republic are tolerant of Islam, but she said that there is continual misunderstanding about Islam throughout her adopted country and Europe.

"There is a lot of bad propaganda about Muslims — that they are all terrorists, that there is no way to talk to them," she says. "As a result, even I begin to feel a little fear of Arabs."

Youssef says the artists who drew the cartoons choose to express their freedom of speech, but failed to depict anything other than an ignorant stereotype.

"I know that journalism should be free," she says. "But if you are free, you should be also clever enough to know what kind of reaction you will get. They were attacking one part of Islam and they did not see the rest."