Calgary, Canada - A Canadian magazine is reprinting Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, prompting Muslim groups to press for hate-crime charges against the publication.
The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, based in Calgary, said on Monday it filed a complaint against the Western Standard, a right-wing weekly newsmagazine that's reprinting eight of the 12 cartoons.
The cartoons have sparked protests around the world and riots in some Muslim countries because they are said to violate an Islamic prohibition against images depicting Mohammad.
Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic council, said his group hasn't yet seen the magazine's latest edition but would try to have Calgary police investigate the Western Standard for hate crimes.
"This is a provocation of Canadians and an insult to our religion," he said. "We are convinced that within the boundaries of Canada there is a way that we can prosecute these people. The whole Muslim community is seriously looking into this and consulting with lawyers."
It's the third time Calgary police have been asked to lay charges over the cartoons. The first came after the images were tacked to utility poles in a downtown neighborhood and the second came after they were published in the Jewish Free Press, a tiny local paper that printed three last week.
A spokesman for the city's police force said prosecutors had declined to lay charges.
Canadian law prohibits the willful incitement of hatred toward any identifiable group, based on ethnicity, region or sexual orientation.
While the cartoons have been reprinted by several European newspapers, no major Canadian newspaper has run the series. One of the cartoons was reprinted by Le Devoir in Montreal. A University of Prince Edward Island student newspaper printed the cartoons but copies were ordered off the campus.
The Globe and Mail, published in Toronto, said on Saturday that running the cartoons "would be both gratuitous and unnecessarily provocative."
The Western Standard, which has a circulation of 40,000, has steered toward the provocative in the past. It garnered attention during Canada's recent election campaign for obtaining the then-ruling Liberal Party's platform before it was released, and for comparing former Prime Minister Jean Chretien to television mobster Tony Soprano.
Ezra Levant, publisher of the Western Standard told CBC television the magazine decided to publish the cartoons because it considered them newsworthy.
"We're not publishing them for their editorial merits. They're boring cartoons. They're bland. They're not interesting. We're not running them because we share their views. We're running them because they're the central fact that caused Muslim radicals around the world to riot," Levant said.