Posted on 02/04/2006 11:31:17 PM PST by anymouse
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."
But Denmark and Norway did not wait for more violence.
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.
"We will redeem our prophet Muhammad with our blood!" they chanted.
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.
HUH?
If I understand what you are trying to say, all those Iraq`s that are working with our guys are really the enemy and that our guys understand that?
"...We have discovered the enemy's soft underbelly! Draw More Cartoons!
You are 100% correct. These insane Muslims can operate on a combination of adrenaline and seething anger for only so long. If a couple of lame cartoons get them this riled-up, we can physically exhaust them by bombarding them with more "offensive" literature. They will literally exhibit physical/medical disability at some point.
~ Blue Jays ~
bttt
No doubt AP will now start referring to Jesus Christ as 'Son of God', or at the very least, "revered as the Son of God by Christians". /sarc
Man, do I hate AP and Reuters, they are so hypocritical!
Somebody should tell the rioters that there was an error in the translation...
"..gas them, nuke them, or what?"
I'll go for a "nuke them", next.
"STOP! STOP! I will tell you everything just stop abusing the holy book"
What do we gain by insulting them?
its called, drawing out the enemy
Very well said!
Buy those delicious Danish cheeses, hams, cookies, ANYTHING that says MADE IN DENMARK.Support them that way.We should go to their defence militarily in case the enemy wants to try anything against our ally. The REAL war against radicalislam should begin sooner than later, so let us keep antagonizing with the cartoons so as to provoke them into doing something that will call for a violent, decisive response against them.
Let those who want violence on their side be brought out and dealt with.
exactly. when your enemy is irritated annoy him.
You can bet that Syria's leader is helping, behind the scenes, to drum up this "public" protest, to divert attention from his own crimes and his failing regime. Like the terrorists he has always funded, he is exploiting Islam for political game. Yet, the not so funny thing is that he is only doing what most every major Islamic political leader has done, throughout history. Gee, could it be inbred, from the religion??? Ya think???
Yes, and not a peep out of John Kerry.
You can credit a)the sword, b)family size, c)oil and d)Liberals/Commununists/Progressives/Socialists for the largest reasons, IMO.
"The United States called the burnings inexcusable"
But the State Department was clearly on the muslims side when they sided AGAINST the cartoons and with the muslims. Now we are blamining this on Syria? Think again. Syria may have given the nod to the reactions, but it was a lot more muslims doing the deeds and they seemed to have the US nod, too.
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