Wednesday, March 1 2006 14:24 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Paris: The recent violence surrounding the publication in the West of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed illustrate the danger of Islamic 'totalitarianism', Salman Rushdie and a group of other writers said in a statement.

Rushdie, French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy and exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen were among those putting their names to the statement, published in a French weekly.

"We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all."

They added that the clashes over the caricatures "revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. The struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field.

"It is not a clash of civilisation nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats."

The others who signed the statement included Somali-born Dutch feminist, writer and filmmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Iranian writer Chahla Chafiq, who is exiled in France; and Ibn Warraq, a US academic of Indian and Pakistani origin who wrote a book titled "Why I Am not a Muslim."