Posted on 06/11/2008 4:32:30 AM PDT by SJackson
| What the Cartoons Have Unleashed |
Who is responsible for the June 2 suicide attack against the Danish Embassy in Pakistan that killed six people? An increasing number would say that the Danes themselves are responsible, or at least the Danish government, for its obstinate attachment to that irritating little principle of free speech. On Wednesday, June 4, a web posting claiming to be from Al-Qaeda said that the bombing was fulfillment of Osama bin Laden’s vow to exact revenge for the cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad that ran in a Danish newspaper in 2005. Fauzia Mufti Abbas, Pakistan’s ambassador to Denmark addressed a rhetorical question to the people of Denmark: “I’d like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?”
You read that right. Fauzia Mufti Abbas, after jihadist thugs and murderers in her country killed six innocent people because of some cartoons published in a newspaper half a world away, had the volcanic chutzpah to say to Denmark that “the people of Pakistan that feel they have been harassed by what your newspaper has begun.”
Speaking strictly for myself, I feel more harassed by the murders of six people (who, by the way, had nothing to do with the cartoons, although even if they had been the cartoonists themselves this would be no better) than I do by any affront to my religion. If Fauzia Mufti Abbas or you or anyone else drew cartoons of people I revere and respect, people I think brought the best things to humanity, if you made fun of them, ridiculed and mocked them in the most outrageous terms, I might think you were a boor. I might think you were an idiot. But I would not kill you. I would not kill anyone else. I would not think anyone else was justified in killing you or anyone else. I would chalk it up to the fact that people differ in good faith about what is true and good, and we all have to live in the same world.
Muslims the world over, Fauzia Mufti Abbas and Osama bin Laden included, need to understand, but probably never will, that to suggest that the offense they have suffered, or want us to think they have suffered, or want us to think that their coreligionists have suffered, is sufficient to warrant the killing of anyone, is a monstrous exercise in moral myopia. Muslims who are agitating for restrictions on freedom of speech in the West (Pakistan has just asked the EU to impose such restrictions) have lost all perspective, if they ever had any to begin with. And now they are demanding that we lose all perspective as well.
Many already have. The respected analyst of Al-Qaeda Rohan Gunaratna has sided with Fauzia Mufti Abbas: “There is still a lot of dissatisfaction here about the cartoons,” he tells us, “as well as the fact that the Danish government still has not condemned them or the people that were responsible for them. As long as that hasn’t happened, Denmark will be under the constant threat of militant Muslims.” So evidently it’s all up to the Danish government. Muslim leaders in Pakistan have no responsibility to tell their “militant Muslims” that the cartoons did not harm them or Muhammad, and that rioting and killing for this is wrong, and, indeed, insane. They need not tell them that. Apparently Gunaratna believes that their irrational outrage is always our responsibility to rein in.
Of course, Muslim leaders, in Pakistan and elsewhere, want to foster exactly that perception, because it coalesces neatly with the Islamic supremacist agenda. Muslims may do whatever they wish. It is up to Western non-Muslims to adjust and adapt however they must, in order to placate them. And that includes everything up to and including abandoning the freedom of speech in favor of the chastened silence prescribed for dhimmis in Islamic law.
Fauzia Mufti Abbas question was actually quite apposite: “I’d like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?” That is the question that should be asked of all Muslims who have killed or exhorted others to violence over these cartoons -- not of the cartoonists or any Western government.
Islam, the “religion” of perpetual rage ... and outrage.
To the grovelling dhimmi politicians and their stooges in the press:
Mahometanism should be recognized as the murderous, hate-filled, angry, misogynistic, misanthropic *CULT* that it is and *BANNED* as such from all freedom loving societies.
None of us can have freedom if we grant these barbaric savages the freedom to practice their cult, *BECAUSE* their cult requires us to surrender our freedoms.
Get it?
Probably not.
Well said. And, no, people don’t get it because they’ve been brainwashed into the cult of political correctness that says we must “understand” and “be tolerant” of the murderous, abusive radicals.
Our own government has watered down the description of the very enemy we are fighting in the Middle East. Public schools are teaching a watered down version of Islam so our children will be “tolerant”.
It’s enough to make blood shoot out of your eyes - to quote Glenn Beck.
He has a point. The cartoons depicted Islam in a derogatory manner, implying that its followers are easily triggered into random violence. With such a harsh, unfair, and inaccurate depiction, it's no wonder that devout followers of the Religion Of Peace would respond with random violence.
everything will be ok after Obama has a chance to talk with Osama.......
Why won't he release his birth certificate? It is such a minor issue, why not let the American public see it? If anyone asks, they are a hate-filled racist who is trying to subvert the rise of Obama. It's just EXACTLY the same reaction as the rioting Muslims.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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I was talking to a Danish woman last week. The Danes are hopping mad about the whole thing, and this woman seems to think that the Muslims are so sensitive about this because the US is not playing nice with them.
So I asked her, “Pretend it’s 9-12-01, and you are the President of the US, almost 3,000 of your countrymen have been murdered, and 90% of your country is demanding that you incinerate most of the middle east. What do you do?”
She didn’t answer, but another woman, an American, who has lived in Copenhagen for about ten years, whose roots are in the DC beltway government culture started to say, “Well, I wouldn’t.....” Then she stopped herself, and said, with more honesty than I usually expect from a liberal, “You didn’t ask what I wouldn’t do.”
That topic of conversation was pretty much over, and we started talking about jazz musicians.
“Mahometanism should be recognized as the murderous, hate-filled, angry, misogynistic, misanthropic *CULT* that it is and *BANNED* as such from all freedom loving societies.
None of us can have freedom if we grant these barbaric savages the freedom to practice their cult, *BECAUSE* their cult requires us to surrender our freedoms”
I agree completely.
And I also believe our own First Amendment needs to be re-written to specifically exclude Mohammedism and its followers from the protections therein. Seriously. Have at me....
- John
“...and this woman seems to think that the Muslims are so sensitive about this because the US is not playing nice with them.”
I had a Scottish friend living in the states make the same point to me a couple of weeks ago. The current propaganda line in the EU is that the US is causing all their muslim problems because we are fighting them. This notion has been out there for a while.
The new propaganda line (for me, anyway) is that because the US is winning in Iraq, the terrorists are leaving and setting up shop in the EU, Somalia, etc. thus, putting Europeans in more danger.
My point back to my friend was that the Europeans are in charge of their own immigration policies and free-speech laws. If Europeans are in more danger, it is because of what Europeans have done to themselves.
The larger, more interesting point to me is the US-dependent (welfare entitlement) mind-set that so many Europeans display without even realizing it.
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