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A South African court has banned the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in the country's newspapers at the request of a Muslim organisation, the group said Saturday.
A top newspaper editor said that he would challenge the decision in favour of the Council of Muslim Theologians taken late Friday.
Council spokesman Ebrahim Bham told AFP, "We went to court because (...) these cartoons and caricature of the Prophet Mohammed are well known to cause deep offence to Muslims throughout the world,"
"It has offended the religious sensitivities of Muslims. So we took whatever step we could to see if we could prevent that particular type of thing happening in South Africa."
Mondli Makhanya, editor of the Sunday Times, said, "We regard this as a serious blow to the freedom of the press and have every intention of challenging the ruling when the matter returns to court."
Quoted by the Sapa news agency, Makhanya said he had been asked by the Muslim group to undertake not to reproduce the cartoons originally published in a Danish newspaper but had refused.
"We believe that if we were to have given an undertaking not to publish, we would invite similar demands and threats from anyone who felt offended by the stories we publish," he said.
"No credible newspaper can be held to ransom by the beliefs of a section of a population."
Muslims, who regard any depiction of the founder of their faith to be idolatrous, have reacted angrily across the world to the publication of the 12 cartoons, first in a Danish newspaper in September and more recently across Europe and as far as New Zealand.
jca/mb/sj
Europe-Islam-media-SAfrica
AFP 041346 GMT 02 06
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