Muhammad Shuts Down German Website
The German website euroislam.info has been shut down because it published the Muhammad cartoons. The first page can still be found in Google’s cache. The owner of the website apparently received an e-mail (original in German) from his Internet service provider Neue Medien Münnich, stating that the website was shut down immediately and without giving a period of notice.
The service provider motivates the closing down of his customer's website by referring to complaints he received from third parties and his legal obligations as an Internet service provider, but he also adds:
The complaints we received were decisive [for shutting down your site], and also the fact that people are dying elsewhere because of the simple depiction of the Muhammad cartoons. One is allowed to defend strict points of view regarding freedom of expression and freedom of the press. We wonder however whether we should contribute to the fact that a fire is kindled as the result of an exchange of views. We don’t think so.
It is not the first site to be shut down for publishing the Muhammad cartoons (see them here, halfway down the page). [Fortunately The Brussels Journal is being hosted in the US]. The Swedish government also shut down a website for the same reason.
This German instance is different because the website has not been shut by the authorities but by an Internet service provider because the latter received complaints, although they do not specified from whom or when or what the exact contents of these complaints might be. It is not clear why the whole website was shut down and why e.g. the mere removal of certain texts or pictures would not suffice.
Another - separate - reason why euroislam.info has been shut down is apparently because the Internet service provider himself does not agree with the contents of the website of its customer euroislam.info. He refers not only to his legal obligations as a service provider under German legislation, but specifically adds a motivation of his own: “People are dying because of the simple depiction of the Muhammad cartoons.”
This last element is a very strange reaction, certainly in the light of the fact that some of the German mainstream media have also published the Muhammad cartoons, just as some other European newspapers did. The German paper Die Welt has published one of the cartoons. The Berliner Zeitung also reprinted two cartoons as part of its coverage of the cartoon controversy. The German association of professional journalists (DJV) supported the reprinting of the Muhammad cartoons in German newspapers as an essential element of the freedom of expression.

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