Danish embassy invaded

[notyoueither]

[notyoueither]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/02/03/cartoon-controversy060203.html

Muslims march, burn flags over caricatures
Last Updated Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:34:12 EST
CBC News
Violent protests over the publication of editorial cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad are gaining momentum, with activists threatening to launch "a day of anger" across Europe and the Muslim world.

The caricatures were originally printed in a Danish newspaper last fall, causing minor protests, but their republication by a Norwegian paper in December fired up the anger of Muslims again.

Protest on the streets of London Friday, Feb. 3, 2006.
Muslims believe any depiction of Muhammad is blasphemous because it could lead to idolatry.

About 500 protesters who gathered in London on Friday carried signs with slogans such as: "Freedom of speech, go to hell" and "Kill, kill Denmark!"

As they walked through the British capital, they shouted: "What do we want? Jihad! [holy war!] When do we want it? Now!"

"The only way this will be resolved is if those who are responsible are turned over so they can be punished by Islamic law, so that they can be executed," Abu Ibraheem, a 26-year-old protester in the British march, told the Associated Press. "There are no apologies ... Those responsible would have to be killed."

Other European media agencies show cartoons

The controversy is being fed by the decision of other European news organizations to reprint or broadcast the cartoons this week as a way of defending freedom of the press.

Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary and Italy have joined the group of those publishing the caricatures, one of which shows the Prophet wearing a turban with a lit fuse to suggest a bomb.

Carlos Enrique Bayo, editor of the Barcelona-based El Periodico, told CBC News that his newspaper wanted to inform readers about the controversy, "so we showed how the page was printed in Denmark."

The decision prompted a flood of letters from newspaper subscribers.

"A lot of readers are proud of our decision, and half of them are opposed to us printing those cartoons," Bayo said.

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first printed the cartoons, has apologized for any hurt it might have caused, but not for publishing the cartoons.


FROM FEB. 2, 2006: Protest ramps up over Muhammad cartoons

Syria and Saudi Arabia have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark over the controversy, and there have been boycotts of Danish products throughout the Middle East and countries around the world with large Muslim populations.

During the London protest Friday, two Danish flags were burned.

In Iraq, hundreds of protesters also took to the streets and burned the Danish flag, and similar protests were held in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, said he was also offended by the images, but called on Muslims to moderate their reaction.

"We are a people who by the instructions of religion are bound to take the course of forgiveness and accommodation," he said.

"As much as we can do this, we must have, as Muslims, the courage to forgive and not make it an issue of dispute between religions or cultures."

The different story lines are interesting.

No mention of the Danish clerics taking the case to the Middle East. Here it is the Norwegian reprinting that started the big mess.

[Combat Ingrid]

"Kill Denmark"

I think some people need to chill.

[notyoueither]

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060203/muhammed_cartoon_follow_060203/20060203?hub=TopStories

Muslim furor over cartoon continues to spread
Updated Fri. Feb. 3 2006 11:23 PM ET

CTV.ca News

Thousands of Muslims took to the streets in Jerusalem and Gaza Friday demanding vengeance for a controversial cartoon that has sparked outrage across the Muslim world.

The cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were first published in a Danish newspaper, and were reprinted this week in several other European countries, sparking anger.

Large rallies were held in the Gaza Strip and Iraq, and raucous demonstrations were staged outside the Danish embassies in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia Friday.

One of the cartoons depicts the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a burning fuse. In another, a Soviet star and crescent moon are superimposed over his face.

Police were prepared for Friday's demonstrations in Jerusalem, and tussled with angry mobs that spilled out of mosques after Friday prayers, protesting in the streets near Islam's third-holiest site.

In Gaza, an angry crowd screamed "God is great," and an imam told 9,000 worshippers that the hands of those who drew the cartoons should be severed.

Muslims marched in droves through other Palestinian cities on Friday, burning the Danish flag and threatening repercussions for the European countries where the cartoons were published.

In the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin, Danish flags and product imports were burned.

"Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up," protestors in Ramallah shouted, Associated Press reported.

The Palestinian legislature was taken over by Hamas gunmen as 10,000 demonstrators chanted "Down, down Denmark," AP reported.

After weekly prayer services in Iraq, about 4,500 people held a rally in Basra while hundreds in Baghdad demonstrated outside of a mosque, AP reported. The protestors burned the Danish flag and threw Danish-made products into the flames.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, condemned the cartoon depictions in a posting on his website Jan. 31.

"We strongly denounce and condemn this horrific action," al-Sistani said.

However, the cleric did not encourage any protests and he even placed some responsibility on militant Muslims for the negative way that Islam is depicted, AP reported.

He said some segments of the Muslim community were "misguided and oppressive" and that their actions "projected a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love and brotherhood."

At the Danish embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, more than 150 protestors pushed passed security into the building's lobby demanding an apology for the cartoons.

They were unable to get up to the embassy on the 25th floor but they did tear the Danish flag down and set it on fire. They also pelted the embassy with eggs.

"We are not terrorists, we are not anarchists, but we are against those people who blaspheme Islam," one protestor shouted, AP said.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, about 800 people shouted "Death to Denmark" and "Death to France" while around 1,200 people demonstrated in the southern city of Karachi.

The country's parliament condemned the drawings as "vicious" in a unanimous vote.

In Turkey, hundreds protested in Istanbul, with many making their way to the Danish consulate.

"Hands that reach Islam must be broken," a group of Muslims chanted outside of an Istanbul mosque, AP reported.

At Islam's third holiest site, Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Israel banned access to Palestinians aged 45 and under.

About 100 men did protest outside Jerusalem's Old City on Friday chanting Islamic slogans and carrying Hamas flags. Israeli police broke up the protest along with another one at Damascus Gate using tear gas and stun grenades, AP reported.

The caricatures of the Prophet were first published by Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, in September. They were republished in papers in France, Norway, Germany, Switzerland and Hungary this week, causing tension that quickly spread around the Muslim world.

On Friday, Belgium, Italy and Spain's leading newspaper, El Pais, became the latest papers to run the images.

"What shame, Europe gives into Islam and apologizes for the satire of Allah," Libero, an Italian right-wing paper, wrote in a Friday headline.

Muslims worldwide are outraged as Islam strictly forbids any depiction of the revered father of the religion. Even positive images of the Prophet Muhammad are not allowed to prevent idolatry in the religion.

Canadian reaction

Syed Soharwardy, of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, appeared on Canada AM Friday saying that Canadian Muslims were upset but that they were dealing with the situation constructively, by emailing and phoning officials.

"The Muslims in Canada, they are outraged," Soharwardy said. "They are expressing their anger through peaceful means… they are protesting against these horrible cartoons that have offended Muslims around the world."

Soharwardy said he received an email from a Danish media watch group, dated Dec. 14, that outlined peaceful ways that the international Muslim community initially tried to deal with the situation.

"They tried very hard to ask them to withdraw the cartoons and apologize, nothing happened," he said. "They contacted us in December and said that we should do something about it."

Globe and Mail cartoon columnist, Brian Gable, said that the debate lies between freedom of expression and the freedom not to be offended. He said that one taboo area is religious faith, but not how people use their faith.

"If someone of any faith chooses to proceed with a violent act, I feel that's fair game," Gable said.

But Soharwardy said there has to some restrictions.

"The freedom of expression has to have some limits," Soharwardy said. "Would they make fun of any ethic group in Canada? Aboriginal people, South Asians, Chinese community?"

With files from Associated Press

If they used their ideology as an excuse to kill people, yes. In spades. In fact I think Mr. Soharwardy would be surprised at the reception that would be given in Canada to people advocating death to people they disagree with.

[Winston]

Yes nye, people apparently need constant reminding that the current crisis started only after Danish Muslim clerics went on a tour of the Arab world with wildly exaggerated claims as to the number of cartoons, their level of "offensiveness", the intentions behind them, and the general "climate of persecution" experienced by Muslims in Denmark.

And a handful of them continue to say one thing to Danish media (e.g. "We are against the boycott") and another to Arab media, often on the very same day ("The calls for a boycott brings us joy"). Those quotes are by Imam Abu Laban from Thursday.

Other Danish Muslims, moderates, are trying to distance themselves from the Imams, and today a founding meeting/conference for this grouping is to be held at Christiansborg Palace, seat of the Parliament, expected to draw an attendance of ~150 Muslims; those are people who are fed up with the hypocricy of the Imams, and courageous enough to actually stick their necks out on this. A Syrian-born MP, under constant police protection for several years now, is among the organizers.

[Verto]

The Reagan supports Denmark in pissing off the Muslims, who hate freedom of expression and thought.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Agathon

Print stuff that offends people in the US and there will be no shortage of extremist media figures calling for your death.

Really? Because stuff that offends the US is pretty much printed daily in many countries and in the US itself, and I've yet to see any media figure call for death over any of it.

[germanos]

Originally posted by notyoueither


I'm afraid you're missing the point entirely.

(snip)

The point is the violence being done as part of the reaction to these cartoons. Admittedly the largest offender, the Prophet with a bomb for a hat is egregiously insensitive, and the poor taste of the cartoonist and the publisher should be the story, however it is not. That is the point.

I agree, and have argued the same you say.

Cartoons in the press of Muslim countries have not resulted in violence against Muslims or Muslim countries.

Televised beheadings have not resulted in violence against Muslims or Muslim countries.

AFAIK, these beheadings are only shown by al-Jazira, the only non-state-run broadcaster. And I remember clearly that the first such broadcast did cause quite an uproar, and quite a few calls have been made, and continue to be made, to shut al-Jazira down.



@Oerdin: I think that the original reason for publicizing those cartoons are a bit different, and the reasons you list are more an after-the-fact explanation.
Maybe one of our Danish posters can dig up the september 2005 issue and translate the article that ran the original cartoons?
From what I understand the paper ran the cartoons in response to the fact that somebody wrote a childrens book on (the life of?) Mohammed, and couldn't find an illustrator who would depict Mohammed himself.
Didn't Hollywood made a movie on the life of Mohammed where Mohammed himself is not shown for the very same reason?

[Silver14]

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Jac de Molay

Agreed. I stand by the paper-in-question when it invokes free speech, but the other papers picking up the comics and running them seem only like so much trolling and baiting.

On the contrary, I believe they are acting in defense of free speech because they are supporting and defending a paper and a nation which has now been targeted by the hate filled fundamentalists who wish to kill everyone who does not agree with them. Islam should be treated exactly the same as every other religion and should receive no special privileges.

[Winston]

I'm not going to translate an entire article when I can pretty much summarize the background for its publication in a single post..

It has been repeated time and again by myself and others that the drawings were commisioned for a special to determine how widespread the intimidation and self-censorship were among Danish illustrators/editorial cartoonists in terms of depicting Islam-related topics. Part of the reason for this was the children's book on the history of Islam, which couldn't find illustrators willing to appear under their own name.

Edit:

Another part of the reason was an incident in which a lecturer at the University of Copenhagen had on two occasions read from the Koran during a lecture at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute, which deals with research on Arab culture, among other things. Following another lecture a couple of days later, he was dragged from a taxi cab and beaten and kicked severely for having "defamed the Holy Book", since only Muslims are allowed to read it out loud.

[/edit]

12 of the 45 cartoonists accepted the invitation; 33 were either intimidated into not accepting, or were not interested for other reasons.

BTW, 3 of the 12 cartoons can actually be seen as being directed more against the newspaper and the exercise at hand than against Muhammed. 2 of those ridicule the author of the children's book on Islam, who couldn't contract illustrators save for guarantees of anonymity, as an individual who is pre-occupied with PR-stunts, and the 3rd one has a Muslim elementary school student named Muhammed pointing to a blackboard bearing the Farsi text "Jyllands-Posten's editorial board is a bunch of reactionary provocateurs".

And another 2 of the cartoons, the one with Muhammed wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse (Az' current avatar), and that of Muhammed with a drawn sword and a black bar across his eyes flanked by two women in burkhas, were done by two of the newspaper's own cartoonists - and weren't made specifically for this special in the culture section of the paper on 30 September 2005. They'd appeared before in the paper in other contexts without causing any criticism, let alone any uproar like they do now.

[Winston]

Early this morning, Palestinian security sources said that two foreign citizens had been kidnapped in Gaza. The two were dragged from their car in the central part of the Gaza Strip by masked and armed men. Information relating to the kidnapping remained sparse on Saturday morning.

...

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Agathon

Print stuff that offends people in the US and there will be no shortage of extremist media figures calling for your death.

Agathon, that is silly. Even for you.

[Dinner]

It is very clear that Arab dictatorships are now trying to blow this out of proportion in order to get their citizens focused up a foreign "enemy" instead of upon the oppressors at home.

[Winston]

Originally posted by Winston
Early this morning, Palestinian security sources said that two foreign citizens had been kidnapped in Gaza. The two were dragged from their car in the central part of the Gaza Strip by masked and armed men. Information relating to the kidnapping remained sparse on Saturday morning.

...

Jyllands-Posten now report that sources with the Palestinian security forces say the 2 people kidnapped were Palestinians, and that the kidnappers made a mistake in thinking they were foreign citizens.

Sounds a bit sick to me that they would apparently have this information. Also, no mention as to whether the two were released.