The Sunday Independent, which claimed that it had had no intention of carrying the cartoons, was incensed at this assault on its Freedoms. The Sunday Times probably expressed similar sentiments, but as I don't read it, I can't say for sure. The editor of the Mail and Guardian apologised for having published - after her mother was taken to task.
Much of the discussion in my vicinity centred around just how offensive the cartoons were, anyway - and whether the global response was within proportion. And whether a judge from a different religious background would have been of the same view, locally. Did the cartoon - at least, the one we saw - constitute an assault on the dignity of Muslims, I asked a selection of my Muslim friends. Views ranged, predictably, from those who thought that Muslims, like anyone else, were free to boycott media which carried things they didn't like, to those that thought that in the current context of global assaults on Islam, anything defamatory was inflammatory and best suppressed.
But, that said, most confessed to finding the cartoon very funny. Which raised that awkward dilemma - do you laugh at an offensive joke if it's funny? There seemed informal consensus that only the group who were the "target" of the joke had the right to laugh, that everyone else should shake their heads in outrage and disgust - but often these things had more than one potential "target". I'm quite sure that what I found offensive about the cartoon published in the M&G would not be the same as some Taliban official, and we'd probably identify different entities as the "butt" of the joke.
On the other side of the globe, censorship was drawing flak from a different source. Google had finally buckled and instituted censorship to keep on the right side of the Chinese State. The outcry across the planet was resounding - Google, that anti-Microsoft, had given in! As C3PO would say, "we're doomed!"
Are we? In the 1980s, repressive legislation prevented reporting on a host of political and other matters. Did this stop the truth from emerging? Not remotely - it merely stopped people from believing in the media as a comprehensive source of information. Only those who wanted the comfortable reassurance of State propaganda elected to believe it - the rest of us sought our information elsewhere, and found enough to support our suspicions. A closed portal is no match for an open mind.