This one goes for my stand on the recent matters with the caricatures in the Danish newspaper. As far as I know, the European Council has agreed not to apologize about them, but has only expressed regret for the disorder they have caused. In my opinion, their idea is right, since we should not apologize for something that we can not be blamed for.

First of all, the Western World, the society of Western Europe and North America, highly appreciates freedom of thought, freedom of expression. In our culture the censorship is abolished, and there are very few limits to state openly someone's ideas, opinions and beliefs. We can make comments on politicians, officials, presidents, kings and queens. We can draw caricatures or comics about them. No one is so absolutely high-ranked that we would be afraid of saying something bad about him or her. Therefore I think the islamic world has to accept this, as well as we would accept their traditions when living in their country.

Secondly, this is a secular society. There are thousands of comics about God, Jesus and other religious characters of christianity. And, although they sometimes may seem offensive , the most of religious people do not tip their hat to them. I mean, if someone truly believes in something, they do not take nonsense like this seriously. To my mind, this could be some kind of intended trouble-making, since there are many groups of fighters that are very aggressive towards the West.

And finally, there is certain proof about this statement. According to what I read in "Diena", the caricatures were first printed in September. September 2005, much time has definitely passed since then! AND, those two most offensive pictures printed in the booklet, that created the scandal, had been added only then. They had never been printed in the newspaper. It seems to me some kind of provocation, to increase pressure and tension between the West and the East.

Of course, we should be careful not to hurt other people's feelings. Still, this case looks like a deliberate act of provoking hate, thus no apology is needed. In contrary, I think the politicians should keep this accident in mind as a method of causing trouble in the world.