Russian Rabbi responds

Russia's Chief Rabbi responds to the Mohmmad Caricature: Interfax: Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar expressed sympathy for the Muslims whose religious feelings were insulted by the Mohammed cartoons, but condemned the raiders. ‘It is repulsive to abuse God in cartoons, but it is twice as repulsive to commit such abusive actions as burning national flags, the more so to set fire to embassies using the name of God’, Rabbi Lazar said in a interview published in Trud daily on Friday. Extremists, he said, use ethnic and religious differences simply to create an image of ‘a stranger’ to be fought with. “I am very much ashamed for journalists who, in describing particular disorders in the world, call them ‘religious strife’. It is not a religious strife, but cynical games played by extremists who incite lower social groups against other states and peoples using pseudo-religious slogans”, he said. Russia, he reminded, is a multi-religious state and inter-religious dialogue is of special importance in the struggle with extremism.