Danish embassy invaded - Part II

[Pyrodrew]

Evil Page 2.

[Geronimo]

I couldn't find any Danish products at two large grocery store chains in my area. I wonder which danish brands I would have the best luck looking for.

[Spiffor]

Lego

And look for Feta too. If it tastes like crap, it is surely Danish.

[Hueij]

Isn't Carlsberg Danish?

[Pyrodrew]

Cartoon Protests Leave 15 Dead in Nigeria

By NJADVARA MUSA, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 50 minutes ago
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria - Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.

It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa's most populous nation. An Associated Press reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze.

In Libya, the parliament suspended the interior minister after at least 11 people died when his security forces attacked rioters who torched the Italian consulate in Benghazi.

Right-wing Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli resigned under pressure, accused of fueling the fury in Benghazi by wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with one of the offending cartoons, first published nearly five months ago in a Danish newspaper.

Danish church officials met with a top Muslim cleric in Cairo, meanwhile, but made no significant headway in defusing the conflict.

And in what has become a daily event, tens of thousands of Muslims protested — this time in Britain, Pakistan and Austria — to denounce the perceived insult.

But it was in Nigeria, where mutual suspicions between Christians and Muslims have led to thousands of deaths in recent years, that tensions boiled over into sectarian violence.

Thousands of rioters burned 15 churches in Maiduguri in a three-hour rampage before troops and police reinforcements restored order, Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said. Iwendi said security forces arrested dozens of people in the city about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital, Lagos.

Chima Ezeoke, a Christian Maiduguri resident, said protesters attacked and looted shops owned by minority Christians, most of them with origins in the country's south.

"Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters," Ezeoke said. Witnesses said three children and a priest were among those killed.

Nigeria, with a population of more than 130 million, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south.

Thousands of people have died in this West African country since 2000 in religious violence fueled by the adoption of the strict Islamic legal code by a dozen states in the north, seen by most Christians as a move to impose religious hegemony on non-Muslims.

The Danish cartoons, including one showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse, have set off sometimes violent protests around the world.

After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed the caricatures in September, other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe, followed suit, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

But Nigeria has been spared much of the violence seen elsewhere in the world, though lawmakers in the heavily Muslim state of Kano burned Danish and Norwegian flags and barred Danish companies from bidding on a major construction project. Kano lawmakers also called on the state's 5 million people to boycott Danish goods.

With Saturday's deaths, at least 45 people have been killed in protests across the Muslim world, according to a count by The Associated Press.

In the violence in Libya, Seif el-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, said four of the 11 dead were believed to have been Egyptians or Palestinians.

"Setting the consulate on fire was a mistake, but using excessive force was the most tragic response," the younger Gadhafi said, explaining the suspension of Interior Minister Nasr al-Mabrouk.

Gadhafi expressed pride, however, that the demonstrators were behind Calderoli's resignation when "other Arab states refused or lagged behind in taking revenge for insults to their religion."

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi blamed the riots in Libya, Italy's former colony, on "thoughtless action by our minister," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.

Calderoli said he wore the shirt to show "solidarity to all those who were hit by the blind violence of religious fanaticism." He said he did not intend "to offend the Muslim religion nor to be the pretext for yesterday's violence."

In Cairo, Bishop Karsten Nissen, of Denmark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, met with Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of al-Azhar University, the world's highest Sunni Muslim seat of learning.

Tantawi said the Danish prime minister must apologize for the drawings and further demanded that the world's religious leaders, including him and Pope Benedict XVI, should meet to write a law that "condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets." He said the United Nations should then impose the law on all countries.

In response, Nissen did not address the issue of a global law but said it was impossible for Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to apologize for what a newspaper had published.

"I have brought to his excellency (Tantawi) the apology of the newspaper, but our prime minister did not draw these cartoons. Our prime minister is not the editor of this newspaper. He cannot apologize for something he did not do," Nissen said.

So far the West and Islamic nations remain at loggerheads over fundamental, but conflicting cultural imperatives — the Western democratic assertion of a right to free speech and press freedom, versus the Islamic dictum against any representation of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims say such depictions could encourage idolatry.

How about instead of a global law against blasphemy there is a global law for free speech? Only then will the West stop burning down embassies and killing people.

[Az]

Tantawi said the Danish prime minister must apologize for the drawings and further demanded that the world's religious leaders, including him and Pope Benedict XVI, should meet to write a law that "condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets." He said the United Nations should then impose the law on all countries.

If any such thing takes place, I am going to start a little revolution.

[Datajack Franit]

World War

[Dr Strangelove]

IIRC the Koran contains a mangled version of the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians, so will the Koran be outlawed?

What about Scientology? Will it become illegal to insult L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics?

If I make up my own religion and declare myself a prophet will I and my writings be protected?

What about attempts to eradicate religions in certain areas? Surely religious genocide should count as a desecration of that religion's beliefs. Would the law permit the international community to take action to protect the Christians and pagans of Sudan?

The UN has never had the power to impose laws upon nations. Is Tantawi ready to permit such a precedent? He should remember that the combined total of liberal democratic nations and Christian dominated nations probably comprises a majority of the UN members. He might find laws eliminating some of Islam's favorite practises passing the general assembly.

Let's say we go along with his suggestion for a minute. If China uses its security council veto to block the passage of this bill, then what? Is Islam ready to add another billion people to its already formidable list of enemies?

[Chemical Ollie]

Buddha was fat and ugly!

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Spiffor
The guy bears a large responsibility for 10 deaths. He knew that it'd stir much trouble, he knew what kind of trouble that would stir (unlike Jyllands Posten), and he did it purposefully. 10 people are dead now.

More importantly, unlike JP, he was a govt official. Lets not forget that distinction.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Geronimo
I couldn't find any Danish products at two large grocery store chains in my area. I wonder which danish brands I would have the best luck looking for.

Try the cheese section, look for Havarti (a type of cheese,not a brand) or Danish Blue.


In beers try Carlsberg or Tuborg.

This weekend i had a danish havarti, on lovely American bagels with roma tomatoes. Also had "elephant" malt liquor from Carlsberg - the regular beer was sold out.

[Winston]

lotm

In my paper (Jyllands-Posten) yesterday, there was an article on a protest in Washington D.C. over the weekend. The headline read "Peaceful protest in Washington".

It said that the exchanges were strictly verbal as about 50 protesters clashed at the gates of the Danish embassy in the U.S. capital. About 40 people were present to protest the 12 Muhammed cartoons, and the protest had been cleared with police in advance. And so had a counter-protest by a small Conservative group called Free Republic who had positioned themselves in front of the gates with Danish flags and Stars and Stripes, as well as plaques reading "human shields" and paying tribute to Denmark.

At no point was there any physical contact between the two groups, and the chilly winds seemed to have a cooling effect on tempers of the protesters, who dispersed by themselves after a short time in front of the embassy. The area is under constant police surveillance, in part because Bill and Hillary Clinton overlook the entrance to the embassy from their Washington home.

Picture accompanying the article,

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, we normally don't have many violent protests in the US (at least in recent times). I haven't heard many, if any, Muslims in the US calling for death and violence. I think they declare all violence out of bounds, but say the pictures were offensive.

[Arrian]

Sanity is boring, eh?

-Arrian

[Winston]

Another demonstration in front of the Danish embassy in Washington D.C. on Friday. This time, around 100 Americans turned up to show their support of free speech and of Denmark. The organizer of today's protest was Christopher Hitchens, commentator with Vanity Fair, who had rallied people for the protest under the call of "Stand Up for Denmark".

Thanks, America. At a time like this, it's good to know who your friends are.