Syrians Torch Embassies Over Caricatures

DAMASCUS, Syria - Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday — the most violent in days of furious protests by Muslims in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

In Gaza, Palestinians marched through the streets, storming European buildings and burning German and Danish flags. Protesters smashed the windows of the German cultural center and threw stones at the European Commission building, police said.

Iraqis rallying by the hundreds demanded an apology from the European Union, and the leader of the Palestinian group Hamas called the cartoons "an unforgivable insult" that merited punishment by death.

Pakistan summoned the envoys of nine Western countries in protest, and even Europeans took to the streets in Denmark and Britain to voice their anger.

At the heart of the protest: 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and reprinted in European media in the past week. One depicted the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. The paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media was practicing self-censorship when it came to Muslim issues.

The drawings have touched a raw nerve in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

Aggravating the affront, Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said repeatedly he cannot apologize for his country's free press. But other European leaders tried Saturday to calm the storm.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said she understood Muslims were hurt — though that did not justify violence.

"Freedom of the press is one of the great assets as a component of democracy, but we also have the value and asset of freedom of religion," Merkel told an international security conference in Munich, Germany.

The Vatican deplored the violence but said certain provocative forms of criticism were unacceptable.

"The right to freedom of thought and expression ... cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," the Vatican said in its first statement on the controversy.

The United States called the burnings "inexcusable" and blamed the Syrian government for security failures.

" Syria must act decisively to protect all foreign embassies and citizens in Damascus from attack," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement. "We will hold Syria responsible for such violent demonstrations since they do not take place in that country without government knowledge and support."

With their Damascus embassies up in flames, the foreign ministries advised their citizens to leave Syria without delay.

"It's horrible and totally unacceptable," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Danish public television Saturday.

No diplomats were injured in the Syrian violence, officials said. But Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds — whose country, along with Chile, has an embassy in the same building — said she would lodge a formal protest over the lack of security.

In Santiago, the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Chilean Embassy in Damascus was also torched but nobody was injured.

The demonstrations in Damascus began peacefully with protesters gathering outside the building housing the Danish Embassy. But they began throwing stones and eventually broke through police barricades. Some scrambled up concrete barriers protecting the embassy, climbed into the building and set a fire.

"With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!" the demonstrators chanted. Some removed the Danish flag and replaced it with a green flag printed with the words: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

Demonstrators moved onto the Norwegian Embassy about 4 miles away, also setting fire to it before being dispersed by police using tear gas and water cannons. Hundreds of police and troops barricaded the road leading to the French Embassy, but protesters were able to break through briefly before fleeing from the force of water cannons.

Amid the furor, Syria's Grand Mufti urged calm, noting the demonstration had started in a "nice and disciplined way," but then turned violent because of "some members who do not understand the language of dialogue."

"We never expressed our anger in such a way, and we believe that dialogue should be done through guidance and teaching, not through killing, harming and burning," Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun said in remarks carried by state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA.

In Gaza, masked gunmen affiliated with the Fatah Party called on the Palestinian Authority and Muslim nations to recall their diplomatic missions from Denmark until the government apologizes.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, about 50 Palestinians marched to the headquarters of the international observer mission there, burned a Danish flag and demanded a boycott of Danish goods.

Mahmoud Zahar, leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, told the Italian daily Il Giornale the cartoonists should be punished by death.

We should have killed all those who offend the Prophet and instead here we are, protesting peacefully." he said.

Hundreds of Iraqis rallied south of Baghdad, some carrying banners urging "honest people all over the world to condemn this act" and demanding an EU apology.

Anger swelled in Europe, too. Young Muslims clashed briefly with police in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, and some 700 people rallied outside the Danish Embassy in London.

A South African court banned the country's Sunday newspapers from reprinting the cartoons.

Iran's president ordered his commerce minister to study canceling all trade contracts with European countries whose newspapers have published the caricatures, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the caricatures showed the "impudence and rudeness" of Western newspapers against the prophet as well as the "maximum resentment of the Zionists (Jews) ruling these countries against Islam and Muslims."

The leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan denounced the publication of the caricatures. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned nine envoys to lodge protests against the publication of the "blasphemous" sketches.

How do the cartoons help us in the fight against the nutburgers? What do we gain by insulting them?

Actually they are not helping us fight them ....what is happening is that they are fighting themselves. Think of it this way .....they have always used Europe as a place where they can espouse their various forms of angst and ire, where they can use to the maximum the freedoms inherent in those nations. After all the Europeans have always been so tolerant. However in the last couple of years the tide of popular opinion has been turning against them, especially after the murder of the Dutch film-maker, and there is spreading awareness that the significant numbers of Muslims immigrants in Europe are not willing to assimilate into the larger culture. And not only that, but they want to actually turn the culture they found in Europe into some semblance of Islamic decorum.

For instance take MAAD (Muslims against advertising), who have been going about in Britain defacing billboards that they feel are 'immoral.'

Here is a link on MAAD: Link to MAAD

That is just one example (I have others, including some with links, if one cares to see them).

Anyways, Europe is, far and large, waking up to the core issue they have within their midst. Not one of immigration, or even one of Islam ....but rather one of immigration where the migrants are:

- not willing to cohere with the native culture,

- try to change the native culture,

- use the freedoms innate in the native culture to disseminate hate (and even terror).

Everytime something occurs that doesn't please the muslim immigrants they tend to resort to unabated violence, and people are simply tired of it.

How does this help us? Well, it is not meant to help us .....this is 100% the doing of those people who cannot control their rage. Who seek to influence (actually not influence but more along the lines of bring to submission) the culture into which they have immigrated.

I also do not take it as an insult to them .....it would only have been an insult if they had protested against it in a peaceful manner and stuck to civil propriety. However the moment they started threatening kidnap, threatening murder, and burning down embassies it became a great insult ....a great grave insult. However the insult was that the muslims doing this were insulting THEMSELVES.

Crude analogy: If someone says I am a brigand and a scoundrel, I can easily take that as an insult. However, if my reaction to that assertions is to go forth and start robbing and pounding on people passing by, and I am claiming that Iam sticking up people because I am 'protesting' the insult of being called a robber, then serious questions need to be asked.

Some time back a crucifix was put in a jar of urine, and it was called art. In another 'art' exhibition the virgin Mary was smeared with dung.

What happened? People protested, and others decided to not attend the 'art' exhibits. However there were no threats of kidnap, no threats of murder, no masses of people walking around with placards such as these:

If they do not like the free speech in Europe (and for that matter America) then they (and everyone, including myself ...an immigrant BTW) is FREE TO LEAVE. However one cannot come as a guest/migrant to a foreign nation, and then try to change the very bastions that made that nation what it is! It would be like someone coming to my house and telling me I HAVE to become a vegan, chant Daoist mantras while doing Hindu mudras, stick brussel sprouts up my nose and count backwards in Chinese. If that happened I would kick that persons @r$e out of my house with all the strength (and malice) I could muster.

Same thing here .....if it was a simple (and peaceful) protest then all would be 100% ok. And it would be an insult. However when all these violence stuff starts then a whole new beast is born.

The ironic thing is most playground age kids could tell this people what they are doing is silly. After all, in kindergarten most kids know that if Billy insults Jane what she should do is report him to teacher. They also know that if Billy insults Jane, and then she takes a rock and tries to shove it up Billy's nose, that suddenly the teacher (and the parents) will be all over Jane like a bad rash, and Billy's statements (insult or not) will not even matter. Someone needs to hire a very good PR person for the muslims who would find a cartoon worth violence.

Anyways, we do not gain anything. However the radical muslims may VERY well have lost Europe. This has most probably sealed it for them.

We may not have gained a darn thing, but they surely have lost a lot.

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