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Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri called for attacks on Israeli and Western targets to avenge Israel's raids on the Gaza Strip, in an audio tape posted on the Internet on Monday. "O Muslims. Today is your day. Hit the interest of the Jews and the Americans and all those who participated in the aggression against Muslims," said the speaker on the tape who sounded like Zawahri. "Monitor the targets, collect the money, prepare the hardware, plan accurately and then attack," he added, without specifically naming any targets. "No one can say today that we should fight the Jews in Palestine...

In an audiotape posted on Internet, Osama Bin Laden threatened Europe with punishment because of its "negligence in spite of the opportunity presented to take the necessary measures" to stop the publishing of the Danish cartoons.  It also menaced the Vatican with retribution for an alleged role in incitement "against religion."  This al Qaeda warning would have been normal in Salafi Jihad logic. This radical movement obviously considers the drawings as an ultimate insult to Muslims and would unleash extreme violence in retaliation. Actually one would have expected al Qaeda to strike back "for the cartoons offense" a long time ago. In...

Audio and video messages from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden since Sept. 11, 2001: _ March 19, 2008: Slams European countries for the publication of cartoons insulting to the Prophet Muhammad and promises a strong reaction, saying "the response will be what you see and not what you hear." _ Dec. 29, 2007: Warns Iraq's Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vows to expand the terror group's holy war to Israel. _ Nov. 29, 2007: Urges Europeans to stop helping U.S. in Afghanistan conflict, saying on audiotape that war was unfair because he was the "only one responsible" for the...

Bin Laden warns EU over Prophet cartoonsWed Mar 19, 2008 6:25pm EDT DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatened the European Union with grave punishment on Wednesday over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. In an audio recording posted on the Internet, Bin Laden said the cartoons were part of a "crusade" in which he said the Catholic Pope Benedict was involved. The message was released on the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The cartoons were first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 but a furor erupted only after other papers reprinted...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden slammed the publication of drawings insulting to the Prophet Muhammad in a new audio message posted late Wednesday and warned Europeans of a strong reaction to come. The message, which appeared on a militant Web site that has carried al-Qaida statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group's media wing al-Sahab, showed a still image of bin Laden aiming with an AK-47. A voice believed to be bin Laden's described the cartoons as taking place in the framework of a "new Crusade" against Islam and warned Europeans that a...

PARIS (Reuters) - A French court on Wednesday upheld a ruling in favor of a magazine that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, rejecting an appeal by a Muslim group which said they incited hatred of Islam. The cartoons, published in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in February 2006, originally appeared in a Danish newspaper five months earlier. They provoked violent protests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East in which 50 people were killed. Several European publications reprinted them as an affirmation of free speech. "These caricatures, which clearly target a fraction and not the whole of the Muslim...

The world's Muslim countries warned Wednesday that an "alarming" rise in anti-Islamic insults and attacks in the West has become a threat to international security. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called on Europe and America to take stronger measures against 'Islamophobia' in a report prepared for a summit of the group's 57 members in Dakar on Thursday and Friday. The report by a special OIC monitoring group said the organisation was struggling to get the West to understand that Islamophobia "has dangerous implications on global peace and security" and to convince western powers to do more. Islamic leaders...

THE HAGUE, 11/03/08 - Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who provoked fury in Muslim countries with his cartoons, has criticised the way the Dutch government talks about MP Geert Wilders' Koran film. Most Dutch politicians, including Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, do not think Wilders should broadcast the film. "Not one politician in Denmark would say this. It would mean their political ruin. Danish politicians know that you shoud not restrict the freedom of speech," Westergaard said yesterday in an interview in De Volkskrant newspaper. Westergaard received death threats because of the cartoon he drew in 2005, and had to...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

Paris - During a meeting in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has told Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende that he will support the Netherlands if it comes under attack because of the anti-Qur'an film Fitna by populist leader Geert Wilders. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has asked Dutch ambassadors in Islamic countries to do their best to protect Dutch citizens and companies. Pakistan has also brought the issue to the attention of the European Union and the Vatican. At Islamabad's request, the matter has been placed at the top of the agenda at next week's summit of the Organisation...

The statement by Germany’s Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble that European newspapers should reprint the controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a show of support for press freedom is astounding. It is difficult to believe that a supposedly responsible and politically astute politician could say something so irresponsible and dangerous — and Schaeuble is supposedly both. More to the point, Schaeuble knows perfectly well that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to whom the cartoons are not merely deeply offensive but an outrage. He also knows perfectly well what happened when the cartoons...

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - About 1,000 Afghans, incensed by the republication of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers, marched on Sunday demanding withdrawal of Danish and Dutch troops. The protesters, mostly religious clerics in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, also condemned plans by a right-wing Dutch politician to broadcast a film on the Koran. Afghanistan's Religious Affairs Ministry has called the reprinting of the cartoon as an attack against Islam. Several other Islamic countries have demanded that the film by the Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders must not be released. The cartoons were first printed in a Danish...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Vowing "Revenge against Crusaders who attack the symbol of Islam," dozens of Jordanian Islamists burned the Danish flag on Monday to protest the reprinting of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers. The Islamic Action Front, Jordan's main licensed opposition party and the political offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, demanded the government expel the Danish envoy until his government offered an official apology. "Oh government, expel the Danish ambassador: Oh Dane... listen the Prophet is the symbol of our Islam. We will die for his sake and eradicate anyone who humiliates him," chanted angry protesters in...

Islam's Universal Blasphemy Fatwa By Andrew G. Bostom FrontPageMagazine.com | 2/25/2008 Early Tuesday morning (2/12/08) “three men with a Muslim background” were arrested by Danish police on anti-terrorism charges, suspected of having plotted to murder Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist for Jyllands-Posten. Westergaard is one of the 12 cartoonists who on September 30, 2005 published cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to protest the tacit enforcement in Danish society of Islam’s taboo on depictions of Muhammad, no matter how banal, or inoffensive, through intimidation—a clear violation of Western freedom of expression. Upon learning of the arrests, Westergaard (noted for this cartoon)...

Copenhagen - Threatened Danish newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been asked to leave the hotel he has been staying at, media reports said Tuesday. 'I suspected this could happen,' Westergaard told the Berlingske Tidende newspaper after the hotel management asked him and his wife to leave by Thursday, citing fears for the safety of other guests. Westergaard's depiction of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban was one of 12 published in newspapers that sparked violent protests in 2006 by Muslims around in the world. A week ago, security police said they uncovered an alleged plot to murder...

Gunmen destroy Gaza Strip's YMCA library, kidnap guards Jerusalem Post, Israel - Feb 16, 2008 Hamas policemen who rushed to the scene discovered another bomb in the library that had not exploded. Although no group claimed responsibility, ...

SYED SOHARWARDY Special to Globe and Mail Update February 15, 2008 at 12:50 AM EST Recognize my name? Lately, Ezra Levant of the now-defunct Western Standard has been doing his best to demonize me in interviews and blogs. Mr. Levant probably had never heard of me until I filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission against his decision to reprint the Danish cartoons that sparked a wave of violent and destructive protests across Europe and the Muslim world in 2005. The reprinting of the cartoons wasn’t about free speech. The originals are readily available on the Internet for...

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Iran summoned Denmark's envoy to protest the reprinting of a caricature of the prophet Muhammad that triggered riots and the torching of Danish embassies two years ago, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Denmark's three biggest newspapers yesterday printed Kurt Westergaard's cartoon of Muhammad wearing a bomb in his turban, first published in 2005, to show their support for the cartoonist a day after police foiled a murder plot against him. Iran's Foreign Ministry told the ambassador "of Iran's serious concern about the republication of an insulting caricature about Prophet Muhammad," IRNA said. The ministry...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Denmark's leading newspapers are reprinting a cartoon that depicts the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. The papers say they want to show their firm commitment to freedom of speech after Tuesday's arrest in western Denmark of three people accused of plotting to kill the man who drew the cartoon. The drawing by Kurt Westergaard and 11 other cartoons depicting Muhammad enraged Muslims two years ago when they appeared in a range of Western newspapers. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable ones, for fear it could lead to idolatry. The Jyllands-Posten newspaper,...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) ― Danish police said Tuesday they have arrested three people suspected of plotting to kill one of the 12 cartoonists behind the Prophet Muhammad drawings that sparked a deadly uproar in the Muslim world two years ago. Two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin were arrested in pre-dawn raids in western Denmark, the police intelligence agency said. The Dane was suspected of violating Danish terror laws but likely would be released after questioning as the investigation continues, said Jakob Scharf, the head of the PET intelligence service. The two Tunisians would be expelled from Denmark, he...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

Much has now been written about Ezra Levant, the former publisher of the now defunct Western Standard, and his decision two years ago to publish a set of cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. For those who prefer to forget, they were the Danish caricatures of the founder of Islam, implying a connection between Muslim fanaticism and terrorist violence. In response to the appearance of the said pictures and their claim that Islamic extremism led to violence, Islamic extremists killed people, promised to decapitate their opponents and firebombed churches and embassies. Not all Muslims behaved or thought thus. But anyone...

BELARUS - Belarus on Friday jailed for three years an editor of an independent newspaper who reproduced cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that first appeared in Denmark in 2005 and caused mass demonstrations across the Muslim world. The 12 cartoons portraying the founder of Islam, including one showing the prophet with a bomb in his turban, outraged Muslims who saw them as blasphemous. More than 50 people died in protests across the world the following year. Belarussian authorities shut down the "Zgoda" (Consensus) paper in March 2006, around the time when other European journals began reprinting the cartoons. The security...

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Here we go again. Thousands of Sudanese Muslims took to the street last week to threaten death to a British schoolteacher in Khartoum. Her crime? She inadvertently committed the felony of allowing her class to name a teddy bear "Muhammad." The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, has been pardoned by Sudan's president (after initially being sentenced to 15 days in prison) and sent home to England. Yet that happy ending doesn't erase the reaction in the streets of Khartoum. The tired story behind irrational anger in much of the Muslim world remains the same. Watch out if Westerners somewhere are...

Cartoon upsets Muslims Anton Ferreira Zapiro’s dig at a Sunday newspaper’s zero tolerance for Satanism upsets some readers. Cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro — better known as Zapiro — has riled Muslims with a cartoon that portrays Allah, but he is unrepentant. “I do these things because I believe in freedom of expression,” Shapiro said, acknowledging that his cartoon in the Cape Times yesterday had landed him in hot water. He said he understood the cartoon had provoked a flood of angry SMS messages from the Muslim community. It was drawn in support of columnist Deon Maas, who was fired by Rapport...

Over a year after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published those now-infamous cartoons of Mohammad—one of which portrayed the Muslim Prophet carrying a lit bomb in his turban—the country is still noticeably on edge. When I recently visited Copenhagen, a week after a pre-dawn raid netted a handful of suspected Islamic extremists, the twin issues of Islam and integration were difficult to avoid. On television, the news and chat shows were dominated by discussions of coexistence with the country's approximately 200,000 Muslims; newspapers were brimming with reader letters and editorials on Islamophobia, secularism and democracy; and a bookshop associated with the...

Websites run by militant Islamists have listed the names of over 100 Swedish companies as possible targets in the ongoing row surrounding the publication in Swedish newspapers of a caricature of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Detailing the addresses, maps and logos of Swedish businesses, the websites called for their readers to boycott these firms and "take revenge" on Sweden for the publication of a controversial cartoon by artist Las Vilks. SAS, H&M, Alfa Laval, TV 4 and Arla were among the companies listed, according to SVT news programme Rapport, which based its report on a study carried out by the...

(Sweden:) ”Nerikes Allehanda”, the local newspaper that published a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed, has been given support by the World Association of Newspapers. More than 18,000 newspapers around the world are members of the organistation, which says in a statement that it condemns the death threats made against artist Lars Vilks and the Editor-in-Chief of Nerikes Allehanda Ulf Johansson. The W.A.N says it understands that the publication may have caused offence to Muslims, but adds that the newspaper enjoys full freedom of expression and can print what it likes.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Swedish artist Lars Vilks, under a death threat from al-Qaida over his drawing of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, said Monday that police have increased his security and will not allow him to live in his home. Vilks, who was whisked away by police when he returned to Sweden from Germany on Sunday, said he was currently staying at a secret address after security police described the threats against him as ``very serious." "Police guard was nonexistent before this. It's 100 per cent now," he said in a telephone interview. "I can't live in my home, I've only been...

The head of an Al Qaeda-led group in Iraq has offered a $100,000 bounty for someone to kill a Swedish cartoonist for his drawing of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, and has threatened to attack major Swedish companies. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, also offered $50,000 to anyone who kills Ulf Johansson, the editor of the newspaper that published the drawing by Lars Vilks. Sweden's Nerikes Allehanda daily newspaper published the drawing, part of a series that art galleries in Sweden had declined to display, last month. The cartoon showed the Prophet Mohammed with a dog's...

DUBAI (Reuters) - The head of an al Qaeda-led group in Iraq offered $100,000 for the killing of Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks over his drawing depicting the Prophet Mohammad. "From now on we announce the call to shed the blood of the Lars who dared to insult our Prophet... and during this munificent month we announce an award worth 100,000 to the person who kills this infidel criminal," said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, in an audiotape posted on a Web site on Saturday. "The award will be increased to $150,000 if he were...

DUBAI (Reuters) - The head of an al Qaeda-led group in Iraq has offered a $100,000 reward for the killing of a Swedish cartoonist for his drawing of Islam's Prophet Mohammad and threatened to attack major Swedish companies. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, also offered $50,000 in an audiotape posted on an Islamist Web site on Saturday to anyone who killed the editor of the newspaper that published the drawing by Lars Vilks. Sweden's daily Nerikes Allehanda published the drawing, part of a series which art galleries in Sweden had declined to display, last...

Cartoon lunacy has returned once again with the usual menu of outrage, effigy-burning, hurt feelings and apologies. As artists and literalists duke it out both in the U.S. and in Europe, it no longer seems implausible that the world will go up in a mushroom cloud because some fevered fanatic couldn't take a joke. Or even get it. In Europe, it's the Swedes this time who have offended Muslims with cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, including one that shows the prophet's head on the body of a dog. Outrage, never far from the front burner where the date palms grow,...

Democracies like ours are full of well-intentioned people who want desperately to be “fair”, and in Great Britain and in the USA, the well-intentioned among us are unwitting allies of those who hate us and hate themselves. The theoretical definition of multiculturalism is deceptively unthreatening: to treat all cultures as equals. Of course, this is absurd; a cannibal culture on a remote island consisting of people who sacrifice humans and only live into their forties is obviously an inferior culture, but this isn’t the worst of it.

Four men jailed over cartoon demo Javed, Muhid, Saleem and Rahman had denied holding extremist views Four Muslim men have been jailed for their part in protests at the Danish embassy in London, against cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad. Mizanur Rahman, 24, Umran Javed, 27, and Abdul Muhid, 24, were each jailed for six years for soliciting to murder after telling a crowd to bomb the UK. A fourth man, Abdul Saleem, 32, was jailed for four years for stirring up racial hatred at the protest in 2006. The men, from London and Birmingham, were convicted at the Old Bailey....

Muslim group loses cartoons libel case in Denmark Fri Jul 13, 2007 10:02AM EDT By Gelu Sulugiuc and Rasmus Nord Jorgensen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Muslim group lost a libel case on Friday against the leader of a Danish anti-immigrant party who had accused its members of treason for publicizing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. A court ruled that Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of the Danish People's Party (DPP), did not libel the Islamic Faith Community when she accused some of its members of treason for traveling to the Middle East to publicize a Danish newspaper's publication of the drawings, which...

Cartoons were terror motive claim 17.05.2007 Prosecutors claim that four men charged with planning a terrorist bombing were seeking revenge for publication of the Mohammed cartoons Retribution for a Danish newspaper's publication of the now-infamous Mohammed cartoons was one of the motives behind four men's alleged plans to detonate a bomb in Copenhagen, according to the assistant crown prosecutor in the Vollsmose terror trial. Charlotte Alsing Juul accused three of the men of using the cartoons and Denmark's participation in the Iraq war as justification for planning to bomb 'a place where political decisions are made', such as parliament's address...

U.S. Seeks Closing of Visa Loophole for Britons -Full Story- Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.American officials, citing...

Recall the lurid photos of Private Lynndie England, United States Army. At Abu Ghraib, she was pulling an Iraqi man on a leash. Liberals said it was "torture." It violated the Geneva Conventions. Conservatives, hard-wired to "support our troops," said it was no big deal. Rush Limbaugh compared it to a fraternity hazing. Heh, heh. "Most Muslims did not view it as a torture story at all," writes Dinesh D'Souza in his book, "The Enemy at Home." To the Muslims, Abu Ghraib was a story of sexual perversion. D'Souza quotes a Muslim businessman in Turkey: "What the female American soldier...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A Muslim woman denounced and ridiculed by nationalists for wearing an Islamic head scarf announced Friday she was running for Parliament — a move bound to rekindle heated debate about Islam in Denmark. The next election is not expected until 2009, but the mere thought of Asama Abdol-Hamid entering the legislature has revived fears of clashing cultures that emerged last year when Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad sparked riots in Muslim countries. Even mainstream politicians and party colleagues in the left-wing Red-Green Alliance have questioned whether Abdol-Hamid, who moved to Denmark at age 6 with her...

With an unintentional irony that might even tickle the Prophet himself, a new book called "Killed Cartoons'' killed a cartoon. Not because it was bad, but because it was just too good. The book, edited by David Wallis and published by Norton, features political cartoons that other publications considered too hot to handle.

Widow attends massacre trial wearing Mohammed cartoon 26 March 2007 MADRID ? The widow of a man killed in the Madrid bombings attended the trial of Islamic radicals with a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb on her T-shirt. The judge in charge of trial on Monday asked security guards to check the woman?s T-shirt and ordered the cameras to halt live transmissions. Initially, he thought the woman could been a relative of one of the 29 accused and thought she might have put some kind of message on her T-shirt. The T-shirt was a copy of the...

Freedom: In a welcome turn of events, a French court threw out charges against a Muhammad-satirizing magazine. Not only does this reaffirm free speech, it shows Europe's values resurging. The French magazine, known as Charlie Hebdo, is a coarse little humor weekly selling for two euros around Paris, with a circulation of just 180,000. But it showed courage the other French media didn't a year ago when it not only republished two Muhammad cartoons from Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten but added a new one, a caricature of Muhammad surrounded by Islamists, sighing "it's hard to be loved by idiots."

MUSLIMS in Cambridge have demanded a public apology from a student who printed anti-Islamic material in a magazine. The material included a cartoon depicting the prophet Mohammed which sparked worldwide outrage last year when it was published in Denmark. It is thought this is the first time the cartoon has appeared in a publication in England. Asim Mumtaz, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, said: "I'm horrified and shocked. In such a seat of learning, I am horrified that things could stoop to this level. "I'm actually shocked that intelligent people know how offensive this cartoon is and that they...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6339591.stm Sarkozy defends Muhammad cartoons French interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has defended a weekly sued for printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. If we no longer have the right to laugh at terrorists, what arms are citizens left with?

Muslim fury at Sarkozy's support for cartoons By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 1:50am GMT 08/02/2007 Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-Right frontrunner for the French presidency, yesterday earned the ire of Muslim groups when it emerged he backed a satirical magazine's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Lawyers acting for the magazine Charlie Hébdo, which is being sued for defamation by two Muslim groups for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons, read out a letter from Mr Sarkozy, the interior minister, in which he said he preferred "too many caricatures to an absence of caricature". Nicolas Sarkozy: 'I am not in...

A man has been found guilty of stirring up racial hatred during protests against the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Abdul Saleem, 31, was found guilty at the Old Bailey at the end of four-day trial. [Saleem said he was repeating slogans 'because everyone else was saying it'] The court was told that the BT engineer was the "cheerleader" of hundreds of protesters at the London event in February last year. The father-of-five from Poplar, east London, was filmed chanting "7/7 on its way" and "Europe you will pay with your blood". He was remanded in custody to...

ALMOST a year after violent protests against Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the editor who commissioned the drawings said they had prompted a vital debate on the integration of Islam in the West. Flemming Rose, culture editor of daily Jyllands-Postenm, said he had published the 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed to defend free expression against what he saw as self-censorship over Islam in Denmark and Europe. The cartoons sparked protests by Muslims around the world in which at least 50 people died. Many Muslims regard any image of the Prophet as blasphemous. “The cartoons didn't create a new reality, they...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - An editor of a Danish newspaper that published the controversial prophet Muhammad cartoons said Wednesday he expects the debate about self-censorship in the media and artists' fear of offending Islam to continue for years. The Jyllands-Posten daily in 2005 published 12 drawings — one of them showing Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another portrayed him with a bushy gray beard and holding a sword. The cartoons, which were reprinted in a range of Western media, triggered international protests across the Muslim world and attacks on Danish embassies in January 2006....

... then we should really re-examine our testicular fortitude. Der Spiegel excerpts passages from Henryk Broder's new book on the Western response to radical Islamism, pungently titled, Hurray, We're Capitulating! The book has not yet been published in English, but DS gives us a translation on their English-language site. It cogently and somewhat angrily notes the low points in Western dhimmitude: "Objectively speaking, the cartoon controversy was a tempest in a teacup. But subjectively it was a show of strength and, in the context of the 'clash of civilizations,' a dress rehearsal for the real thing. The Muslims demonstrated how...