LONDON, Feb 22: The far-right British National Party (BNP) said on Wednesday it would distribute leaflets showing one of the sacrilegious cartoons published by Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper — a move Muslim groups said would provoke protests and was ‘playing with fire’.

A spokesman for the tiny fringe party, which has no seats in parliament but a handful on local councils, said its use of the image was not intended to cause offence, but illustrated how Islam and Western values did not mix.

The party says it is not racist, but its leader Nick Griffin and another activist are due in court on race-hate charges in October.

The cartoons have not been published by the mainstream press in Britain.

The content of the leaflets can already be seen on the BNP’s web site and the leaflets will be circulated ahead of local elections in May.

“By showing you just how mild and inoffensive the cartoon is, we’re giving you the chance to see for yourself the huge gulf that exists between the democratic values that we share, and the mediaeval views that dominate Islam, even supposedly ‘moderate’ versions,” the leaflet said.

The party spokesman said the BNP wanted the cartoon to provoke debate. “We published the cartoon not to offend individual Muslims — that’s most important — but to make a stand for freedom,” he said.

The move drew immediate condemnation.

“The BNP are playing with fire and there can be no doubt they are doing this in order to try to raise tensions and provoke conflict,” the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said.—Reuters