Europe has removed the cork from the bottle...

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

from the article:

"In the West Bank city of Nablus, gunmen entered four hotels to search for foreigners to abduct, and warned hotel owners not to host citizens from several European countries. Gunmen said they also searched two apartments, but found no Europeans. The gunmen said foreigners had three days to leave Nablus on their own.

The cartoons, which originally appeared in a Danish newspaper, have been reprinted in other European publication -- a development that has generated a clash between Western and Muslim values.

Many devote Muslims find the cartoons to be deeply offensive, but European defenders describe the carcicatures as a legitmate expression of free speech."

________________________________________________

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2...2489.shtml

________________________________________________

Europe's response will be interesting. Will they curtail their own right to free speach that they claim to believe in, or will they bow to Muslim pressures?

By letting things go as far as they have, and as long as they have over the whole Muslim issue, things in Europe are going to get worse before they get better...IF they get better at all.

MIKE BURN

Quote:
DreamTone7

Europe's response will be interesting. Will they curtail their own right to free speach that they claim to believe in, or will they bow to Muslim pressures?

Quote:
(CNN)

Danish government says it can't apologize for cartoons

No apology over Mohammad images, says Denmark

Friday, February 3, 2006; Posted: 9:46 a.m. EST (14:46 GMT)

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Denmark said on Friday it could not apologize for cartoons in a Danish newspaper depicting the Prophet Mohammad as outrage spread across the Muslim world from the Middle East to countries in Asia.

"Neither the Danish government nor the Danish nation as such can be held responsible for drawings published in a Danish newspaper, " Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after meeting with Muslim envoys in Copenhagen.

"A Danish government can never apologize on behalf of a free and independent newspaper, " he said. "This is basically a dispute between some Muslims and a newspaper."

***********

(Deutsche Welle)

Cartoon Row Escalates; Germany Defends Press Freedom

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble rejected calls for the government to apologize for the publication: "Why should the government apologize for the exercise of press freedom?"

ans · Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 441

"Meanwhile, the Danish tabloid Extra Bladet got hold of a 43-page report that Danish Muslim leaders and imams, on a tour of the Islamic world are handing out to their contacts to “explain” how offensive the cartoons are. The report contains 15 pictures instead of 12. The first of the three additional pictures, which are of dismal quality, shows Muhammad as a pedophile deamon, the second shows the prophet with a pigsnout and the third depicts a praying Muslim being raped by a dog. Apparently, the 12 original pictures were not deemed bad enough to convince other Muslims that Muslims in Denmark are the victims of a campaign of religious hatred.

Akhmad Akkari, spokesman of the 21 Danish Muslim organizations which organized the tour, explained that the three drawings had been added to “give an insight in how hateful the atmosphere in Denmark is towards Muslims.” Akkari claimed he does not know the origin of the three pictures. He said they had been sent anonymously to Danish Muslims. However, when Ekstra Bladet asked if it could talk to these Muslims, Akkari refused to reveal their identity."

www.brusselsjournal.com/node/668

So is it a sin to blaspheme when you're doing it for a higher cause (i.e., getting people mad at infidels)?

bitwhys · Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 649

Cartoons offensive, but so is violence, Canadian Muslims say

By COLIN PERKEL

Thursday, February 2, 2006 Posted at 6:03 PM EST

Canadian Press

Quote:
Toronto — Cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist are deeply offensive, but so is the violent reaction to the drawings from Islamic extremists, Canadian Muslims said Thursday.

Outrage over the cartoons, first published in Denmark in September and reprinted in other European countries, has been spreading along with ominous threats throughout the Islamic world.

“The protests in the Middle East have proven that the cartoonist was right,” said Tarek Fatah, a director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

“It's falling straight into that trap of being depicted as a violent people and proving the point that, yes, we are.”

The uproar has also sparked a fierce debate about the deliberately provocative nature of editorial cartooning and the limits of free speech in democratic countries.

While quick to defend freedom of expression, Canadian Muslims said the cartoons are reminiscent of the anti-Semitic depictions of Jews common in European periodicals before the horrors of the Second World War.

“Now, it is the Muslim community that has taken up their place,” said Mr. Fatah.

In Gaza on Thursday, armed militants surrounded European Union offices and threatened to kidnap nationals unless an apology was forthcoming.

In Paris, the daily newspaper France Soir fired its managing editor for republishing the caricatures Wednesday, while Pakistani protesters chanted “Death to France!”

Associated Press, the world's largest news agency, decided against transmitting the cartoons despite carrying detailed articles about the drawings and the ensuing uproar.

“Our practice is to not move material that is known to be offensive,” said Santiago Lyon, the New York-based director of photography.

The sensitivities involved were reflected in editorials in two of Canada's main daily newspapers on Thursday.

An editorial written by The Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee argued that free-speech concerns had to take priority over fears of giving offence.

“For dialogue and debate to flourish, citizens must be allowed the maximum freedom to say what is on their minds, even if it is provocative, insulting, inflammatory, or, yes, blasphemous,” the editorial stated.

Still, the Globe decided against running the cartoons

“We have legitimate concerns that we not unnecessarily offend any group or community,” said Patrick Martin, comment editor at the Globe.

“We don't see the necessity of doing this in this case.”

Haroon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star's editorial page editor emeritus, said invoking free speech was a “disingenuous” attempt to disguise outright Muslim-baiting and anti-Islamic sentiments.

There is a “sacred secular principle” of promoting respect among various faiths,” Mr. Siddiqui wrote Thursday.

“Thinking people and responsible public institutions should err on the side of advancing mutual understanding, not fanning more conflicts.”

However, the satirical Internet publication eFrank, based in Ottawa, has posted 12 of the cartoons on its website as part of an article decrying censorship. A call to eFrank was not immediately returned.

Anne Kothawala, president of the 85-member Canadian Newspaper Association, said freedom of expression must include the right to offend but Canada's laws against inciting hatred provide “a balance.”

Raheel Raza, the Toronto author of a new book called Their Jihad Is Not My Jihad, said the cartoons, one of which shows Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse, served no political or social purpose.

“All that it's doing is inciting hatred,” said Ms. Raza.

Mr. Fatah said the Danish cartoonist missed the mark in making a point about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam.

What he should have done was depict Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden or the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Mr. Fatah.

They are the ones who are “spreading all this nonsense,” Mr. Fatah said.

Edit: oops. had a remark there that was out of place - a cut-and-paste thing.

Edited by: bitwhys at: 2/4/06 17:35

ans2 · Guest

Wow.

All this and Music, too.

rifftrader.com/riffcity/artists/bitwhys/

MIKE BURN · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:28 pm Post subject: Re: Wow

Fanatic Muslims can be so sanctimonious, like almost all religious nutters, Christians, Jews and so on.

Here's an example:

Nobody in Europe took offense on this one.

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

I don't see Christians or Jews burning down embassies over it, Mr. Burns. A bit of a difference, wouldn't you say? For those not in the know, the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus have been burned to the ground.

The momentum is building...

bitwhys · Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 649

you wish

I will not apologize for my belief that in their way the vast majority of the Islamic faith pray for peace just like you and I. I haven't seen the the cartoons and will make a point of avoiding them since their artistic merit undoubtedly ranks right up there with Janet Jackson's shrivelled boob.

Islamic Rage Rises

Muhammad cartoons spur more violence

By AP

Quote:
BEIRUT -- Muslim rage over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad grew yesterday as thousands of rampaging protesters -- undaunted by tear gas and water cannons -- torched the Danish Embassy and ransacked a Christian neighbourhood. At least one person reportedly died and about 200 were detained, officials said.

Muslim clerics denounced the violence, with some wading into mobs trying to stop them. Copenhagen ordered Danes to leave the country or stay indoors in the second day of attacks on its diplomatic outposts in the Middle East.

BROKE THROUGH CORDON

In Beirut, a day after violent protests in neighbouring Syria, a thousands-strong crowd broke through a cordon of troops and police that had encircled the embassy. Security forces fired tear gas and shot their weapons into the air to stop the onslaught.

The protesters, armed with stones and sticks, seized fire engines, overturned police vehicles and garbage containers for use as barricades, damaged cars and threw stones at a Maronite Catholic church in the Ashrafieh area -- a Christian neighbourhood where the Danish Embassy is located.

Flames and smoke billowed from the 10-storey building, which also houses the Austrian Embassy and the residence of Slovakia's consul.

Witnesses said one protester, apparently overcome by smoke, jumped from a window of the embassy and was rushed to hospital. Security officials said he died.

Thirty people were injured, half of them security force members, officials said, making it the most violent of demonstrations across the Muslim world.

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said before meeting with top Islamic leaders that about 200 people were detained, and police said they included 76 Syrians, 35 Palestinians and 38 Lebanese.

"Things got out of hand when elements that had infiltrated into the ranks of the demonstrators broke through security shields," said Interior Minister Hassan Sabei. "The one remaining option was an order to shoot, but I was not prepared to order the troops to shoot Lebanese citizens."

Sabei, like other Lebanese politicians and Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, spiritual leader of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims, suggested Islamic radicals had fanned the anger of the crowds.

Kabbani said outsiders among the protesters were trying to "harm the stability of Lebanon" and "distort the image of Islam."

The United States accused the Syrian government of backing the protests in Lebanon and Syria.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a statement that the resentment over the caricatures "cannot justify violence, least of all when directed at people who have no responsibility for, or control over, the publications in question."

The Syrian state-run daily newspaper Al-Thawra said Denmark was to blame because its government had not apologized for the September publication of the caricatures in the Jyllands-Posten.

The drawings have since been republished in several European and New Zealand newspapers as a statement on behalf of a free press.

Local Muslims offended, decry rampages

By CHRIS KITCHING, STAFF REPORTER

Quote:
Winnipeg Muslims are offended and upset by published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad but they also condemn the violent demonstrations they've sparked.

Asad Khan said he respects a person or organization's right to freedom of speech, but he and others in Winnipeg think the cartoons were in bad taste.

"Freedom of speech also goes with responsible speech," said Khan, president of the Islamic Education Foundation of Manitoba. "In Canada we have hate laws to counteract these types of situations."

'ISLAMIC PHOBIA'

One of the cartoons Muslims find offensive is of the prophet wearing a turban resembling a bomb. Depicting the prophet is prohibited by Islam.

"As a whole it is not considered to be appropriate and there are a lot of people against it," Khan said. "The first time when they published the cartoon it was not malice, but just ignorance. It was subsequently published in other countries and that is nothing but Islamic phobia.

"It's not funny to Muslims and it is not funny to most of my Christian friends," Khan said.

Demonstrators set the Danish Embassy in Beirut ablaze yesterday, a day after Syrians set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus.

"I don't agree with that. Two wrongs don't justify," Khan said. "I was hurt by seeing all of the pictures of fires and shooting of the guns. This is not what Islam is."

Khan said people worldwide should pay attention to what has happened and learn to understand "each other and each other's sensibilities."

I agree with the first article. Republishing them was a sick combination of stubborness and negative populism serving only both sides of the lowest common denominator in the equation.

MIKE BURN · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:33 pm Post subject: Re: re

It was absolutely right (!!!) to re-publish the cartoons. The real ones. This is the duty of information and freedom of press.

I'm all for re-publishing them again, over and over, for further discussion of how a children cartoon became the outrage of the Islamic holy prophet world.

Most definitely western secular societies are based on freedoms other cultures don't grant because of their individual religion. I have no problems with that as long as nobody tells me what I can do and not do in my own country and culture.

This excludes the USA, which is not a secular society and which came here during this outrage and talked bull regarding our European definition of free press. The USA should stop censoring the Stones at the Superbowl before they are coming along and want to tell us how we deal with our immigrants and our freedom of press.

Freedom of press is worth more over here and it will stay that way. That's our culture. We can perfectly criticize everything incl. our own gods and beliefs. If Muslims can't take that, well they can stick to the "no, no" habit in their own countries.

I am absolutely not for insulting anyone, but to blame entire nations for the actions of less than a dozen people in a journalistic cave in Denmark -where the action was covered by the freedom of press 100%-.... it's plain ridiculous. The burnings of European flags went not by unnoticed. I was insulted by some Palestinian sheep shaggers and I tell that every Palestinian sheep shagger directly in the face (did it yesterday on the street here). Those who refuse to stop the bull, go home within 24 hours.

As it turned out, Danish Imams have created and added 4 very bad fake-cartoons themselves to stir up the trouble. One showing their prophet with a pignose banging a sheep. So, the worst insulters of Muslim faith are even their own Imams. Good riddance to them all.

Quote:
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/06/cartoon.protests/index.html

Cartoon protests turn deadly

Monday, February 6, 2006 Posted: 1555 GMT (2355 HKT)

(CNN) -- From Afghanistan to Indonesia, tens of thousands of Muslims around the world have launched a series of new protests -- some violent -- over cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammed.

Provincial authorities in Lagman, Afghanistan, said one protester died in a protest there after clashes broke out between demonstrators and police.

Separately, protesters demonstrated outside Bagram Airbase, a U.S. base north of Kabul. U.S. military officials said between 100 and 150 protesters demonstrated peacefully. But an Associated Press journalist on the scene said he witnessed a clash between Afghan police and protesters at the gate in which two civilians were killed.

And in the east African nation of Somalia, police fired in the air Monday to disperse stone-throwing protesters, triggering a stampede in which a teenager died, according to The Associated Press. (Full story)

In Indonesia, video from a demonstration outside a U.S. consulate showed a protester with a bloody shirt sitting on the ground next to police.

The new wave of protests came as Lebanon apologized to Denmark for a protest Sunday in which the building housing the Danish Consulate was torched. The protest was planned in advance and well publicized, but Lebanese security still took hours to bring it under control.

Officials on the scene Monday found that the consulate had reinforced its doors, so the rioters had not managed to destroy the consulate itself, which was on the fourth floor of the 10-story building.

Other protests Monday took place in Amman, Tel Aviv, Gaza, and Kut, a city in southern Iraq where about 5,000 people congregated, burned flags and burned an effigy of the Danish prime minister.

In Tehran, demonstrators protested outside the Danish Consulate and the Austrian Embassy. Austria is currently serving as president of the European Union. Reuters reported that about 200 people threw fire bombs and rocks.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, schools and businesses closed in protest over the drawings. Some demonstrators set flags on fire and threw rocks at passing cars. And in the Indian capital of New Delhi, police fired tear gas and water canons to try to break up one protest.

bitwhys · Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 649

Quote:
I am absolutely not for insulting anyone, but to blame entire nations for the actions of less than a dozen people in a journalistic cave in Denmark -where the action was covered by the freedom of press 100%-.... it's plain ridiculous.

I'll agree with the "blame entire nations" part completely and I'm disappointed, but not surprised times being what they are, its not a more prominent part of the dialog. I wasn't aware there were added cartoons. That changes things. Guess I'll have to look, now. Anyone got a link to the original set?

MIKE BURN

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11097877/

Scroll down half of the document, find "View controversial cartoons" on the left side.

The thing with the fake cartoons can't be found in U.S. media.

Here is the German source: http://www.n-tv.de/631124.html

(apart from newspapers and radio stations talking about that 24/7)

The article says that Akhmad Akkari, official speaker of the 21 Danish muslim organisations, confesses having added at least 3 FAKE cartoons, which were sent to him by "creative" muslims via e-mail, to the publications of his muslim organisations. This fake/lie then did spread everywhere into the muslim world.

(Akhmad Akkari)

MIKE
mikeburn and friends

bitwhys · Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 649

hmph

from this westerner's eyes they look like a whole lot of nothing. still, let me emphasize I think the WHOLE thing is way out of proportion.

this looks like a good read...

Cartoon anger is a misrepresentation

By John Simpson

BBC World Affairs Editor

Quote:
Western embassies in Middle Eastern cities have been torched. Angry crowds have marched in the streets of London carrying placards calling for beheadings and massacres.

Yet despite how it looks on television news, the response to the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad has mostly been non-violent so far.

There were no demonstrations at all in a sizeable number of Muslim countries. In Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq, the demonstrations passed off quietly.

There has been serious trouble in Gaza, Damascus and Beirut, but in each case, local tensions clearly boiled up and found their expression in this particular issue.

In Syria, such violence is so rare that some people have wondered whether the attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies might not have been provoked by government agents, in order to discredit the beleaguered Islamists there.

In Lebanon, the continuing tension between supporters of the Syrians and supporters of the Americans played a part in the violence in Beirut.

When a breakaway group started to attack a Christian church at Ashrafiya, a group of Muslim clerics did everything they could to stop them.

Delayed reaction

How did a series of not particularly well-drawn or funny cartoons, published on 30 September in a Danish newspaper, produce such anger in Europe and the Middle East four months later?

If anyone fanned the flames, it was not Osama Bin Laden.

Instead, it was the mild, distinctly moderate figure of Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Foreign Minister of Egypt.

As early as November, he was protesting about the cartoons, and calling them an insult.

"Egypt," he said, "has confronted this disgraceful act and will continue to confront such insults."

Perhaps it was a convenient way for the Egyptian government to demonstrate some Islamic credentials while not attacking any of the countries which really matter to Egypt.

He raised the issue at various international meetings. Slowly the news filtered out to the streets.

Past reminders

There are various similarities with the case of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses.

That also took months to come to general attention in 1989.

It was only when Ayatollah Khomeini was told about the way the book dealt with the Prophet Muhammad that he issued his condemnation of it and his threat to Rushdie's life.

The demonstrations became increasingly violent.

Much the same arguments were used then as now, about where freedom of speech ends and gratuitous insults begin.

Militant secularists clashed on air and in print with militant Islamists, each talking past each other.

At one point, Rushdie recanted and asked for forgiveness. At least one of the book's translators seems to have been murdered.

But The Satanic Verses continued to make good money, and the British government asked Rushdie to pay part of the high cost of his own protection.

Eventually the threat faded, and he went to live in America.

Double standards

In 1989, when the Satanic Verses demonstrations were at their height, I was making my way across Afghanistan to Kabul, which was still in the hands of the pro-Soviet Communists.

My guides came from a group of Islamic mujahideen.

In a cave in the mountains outside the city, I was invited to meet a number of local elders who wanted to know why Britain, or any other Western country, would allow a book which seemed to be so insulting to Islam to be published.

In the chilly gloom of the cave, with a glass of tea and a plate of sugared mulberries in front of me, the magnificent old men with their turbans and beards filed in and sat down on the carpets, their AK-47s beside them.

I began with the quote - attributed to Voltaire - about hating what other people say but fighting to the death for their right to say it.

I told them that the West wanted people to be free to express themselves as they wanted - this, I said, was why Europe and the US had supported the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet invaders.

They nodded politely, but I could see they were not convinced.

Why, one of the elders asked again and again, did we allow the Prophet Muhammad to be insulted when we knew how much distress it would cause individual Muslims?

He had a point; after all, a number of European countries would not allow a deeply anti-Semitic book to be published, and have made it a criminal offence to deny the Holocaust.

Why should it not also be illegal to insult the Prophet?

Yet insulting and openly anti-Semitic cartoons and articles often appear in the press in Muslim countries, and we in the West rightly find that deeply offensive.

And when extremists march through the streets, applaud bloodthirsty crimes like the attacks of 11 September and 7 July, that is no less insulting than publishing unfunny and deliberately goading cartoons.

We must not imagine this has the support of the great mass of British Muslims.

Quite the contrary: the groups with their ill-spelt placards are just an unrepresentative, repudiated fringe.

In much the same way, we should not think the entire Muslim world is in flames about it.

But we must understand that many Muslims around the world feel increasingly beleaguered.

Increasing that sense will do nothing to help anyone.

I'd say those cartoons are the least of Islam's image problems.

tell you the truth I think the crack about the virgins is kind of funny.

MIKE BURN

Quote:
bitwhys

I'd say those cartoons are the least of Islam's image problems.

Yep........... :sensational

bitwhys · Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 649

gotta admit I stole the line.

thanks for the perspective :blush

MIKE BURN

You have to come to the conclusion that all this is not about "cartoons"...

Apart from that the cartoons should be reprinted daily all over

the western world, to make a clear stance: We (the western

world) will not bow down to blackmailing from regimes and

religions which do not know the freedoms we do.

Quote:
http://us.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/08/cartoon.protests/index.html

Afghan police have shot and killed several protesters trying to storm a U.S. military base, bringing the death toll from this week's violent demonstrations over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed to at least 10.

Hundreds of protesters hurled rocks at police in the southern city of Qalat on Wednesday. Officers first fired into the air to try to clear the crowd but turned their guns on protesters as they tried to attack the base, provincial police said.