Posted on 02/02/2006 1:59:11 PM PST by crushelits
A dozen Palestinian gunmen surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology for the cartoons, one of which shows Islam's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.
Palestinian gunmen kidnapped and later released a German from a hotel in the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses said.
Earlier, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened at a news conference to kidnap citizens of France, Denmark and Norway if they did not leave Nablus within 72 hours. Newspapers in Germany and Spain have also reprinted the caricatures.
Afghanistan condemned the publication of the caricatures and about 400 Islamic school students set fire to French and Danish flags in protest in the city of Multan in central Pakistan.
The owner of France Soir, a Paris daily that reprinted the cartoons on Wednesday along with a German paper, sacked its managing editor to show "a strong sign of respect for the beliefs and intimate convictions of every individual."
But the tabloid defended its right to print the cartoons, first published last September in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.
Le Temps in Geneva and Budapest's Magyar Hirlap ran another offending cartoon showing an imam telling suicide bombers to stop because Heaven had run out of virgins to reward them.
Several European publications, such as Spain's ABC newspaper and Periodico de Catalunya, showed photographs of papers which had published the cartoons. Other European dailies including France's Le Monde printed cartoons mocking the row.
Some politicians criticized the press for fuelling the row.
FREE SPEECH VERSUS TABOOS IN ISLAM?
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the issue had gone beyond a row between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and now centered on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam, which is now the second religion in many European countries.
"We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work," Rasmussen told the Copenhagen daily Politiken. "One can safely say it is now an even bigger issue."
Rasmussen's office said he and Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller had summoned foreign envoys in Copenhagen for a Friday meeting to discuss the outcry and the government's response.
Denmark's ambassador in Paris met leaders of French Muslims, who have threatened legal action. The ambassador handed over a letter of regret from Rasmussen, written in Arabic, and an apology from the director of Jyllands-Posten.
France's tough-talking Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy defended the newspapers' decision to print the cartoons, adding he was surprised France Soir had sacked its editor.
"We must defend freedom of expression and if I had to chose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure," Sarkozy said, adding there was no reason to make an exception for one religion over another.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the press must "deal with what it has got into" and others urged restraint.
"The actions by other European newspapers now, in publishing these cartoons, is throwing petrol onto the flames of the original issue, the original offence that was taken," said European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.
Danish companies have reported sales falling in the Middle East after protests against the cartoons in the Arab world and calls for boycotts. Morocco and Tunisia confiscated Wednesday's France Soir, which is widely distributed in North Africa.
The Islamic Society of Finland said Muslims there had joined the boycott of Danish goods to protest against the cartoons.
CRITICISM MOUNTS
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said Riyadh considered the cartoons an insult to Mohammad and all Muslims. "We hope that religious centers like the Vatican will clarify their opinion in this respect," he told the state news agency SPA.
Afghanistan said publication of the caricatures would give ammunition to those seeking to disrupt international relations.
"Any insult to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) is an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.
In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon's Shi'ite Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out.
The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Muslims in 1989 to kill Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam in his book "The Satanic Verses." Rushdie went into hiding and was never attacked.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Mohammad, and Syria have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.
With this uproar,the muslim world has inadvertantly exposed its true purpose.Subjugation of the non muslim world to its twisted laws is completely unacceptable to free men and non muslim women.
In truth,a bit of forethought could have avoided all this.Rather than exposing their thug prophet for what he was,he could have been depicted as a family man...accompanied by his little 9 year old bride.
Television, video games, cartoons and even stuffed animals are not allowed. Neither is having a dog in the house or pictures because "angels will not enter" (Sahih Muslim Hadith no.3928). You can't wear gold, you have to wipe you ass a certain way, etc, etc.
Oh, and don't ever masturbate! islam does not allow that under Sharia law (hear that Bill Clinton?) or just about anything else for that mattter. Well, anything fun or anything that would make most people happy. What a f'd up cult. But it's not really a cult, it's more like a form of government than anything else. A REAL repressive form of government and on that's totally opposite to freedom and what America is all about.
There is no bright line between "radical" Islam and more moderate Islam. Moderates are simply more secular and hence less authentically Islamic...according to those who read and actually believe the Koran. The idea that "radicals have hyjacked a good and noble religion" as the president thinks he has to phrase it, is just so much politic language, i.e. bunk.
Live a life in the steps of Mohammed and you will be, by definition, a terrorist. It's time the West wakes up to the fact of the phantom of TRoP......
...much to the delight of the media!
Considering all the mocking and insulting displays that Christians regularly endure I think the Vatican's official response should be "We don't see what the big deal is? You need to lighten up Nayef"
Barbary War III, coming soon to a theater near you.
"Any insult to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) is an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.
Pretty bold for a man whose country is propped up by the Infidel taxpayer.
Check out these cool depictions of Mohammed (I'm particularly fond of the Dante's Inferno collection)
http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/
First it’s nice to see some other countries flag being burned for a change. I never heard a word of outrage from Europe when it was the Stars and Strips on the BBQ.
Second, and this is really juicy, watching the most leftwing media in the world i.e. the European print media (defenders and cheerleaders of multiculturalism, morale equivalency and the Palestinian cause) in an all out Donny Brook with not just extremists but pretty much all of Islam.
Reminds me of the PITA Vs. Act-Up wars.
Popcorn and beer for this required viewing.
I am having a hard time understanding that there is even a debate about this nonsense. I was just listening to Hannity on the radio, and Bill Handle was up against a CAIR advocate, about his parody concerning the Hadj stampedes. I was waiting for Bill to come right out and say "So what their offended, I can say whatever I want about anything." Instead, he was going on about he would apologize, if CAIR would renounce bombings, etc. Is this really debatable in secular countries? I'm confused.
It makes me wonder if somebody's got something planned to occur soon. timeline of the controversey
...and the problem witttth cartoons iss? Muslims use mosques for storing arms...to fight from....blow up innocents...kill innocent MUSLIMS...EVEN TRUE Muslims HAVE FAILED TO ACT ACCORDING TO THE KURAN...to take out false muslims..
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