On the part of the muslims, yes. But, then, what can you expect of a "religion" whose stated goal is to enslave the world with force, and covert by the sword, the alternative to conversion being death or onerous tax for living?
Posted on 02/06/2006 7:21:19 AM PST by dead
Attitudes towards Muslims are hardening even in Europe's most liberal, multicultural societies, writes James Button.
WE ALL know September 11, 2001, transformed the US. But will historians say that in the long run it transformed Europe just as much, even more? It is a question worth asking as the fire lit by the publication of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad continues to burn. Because a straight line runs from September 11 to here.
September 11 enraged Pim Fortuyn and drove him into politics. Fortuyn was the maverick Dutch politician who called Islam a "backward" religion. He might have rocketed to the prime ministership had he not been murdered (by an animal rights activist) in May 2002.
Fortuyn broke the consensual, multicultural mould of Dutch society. He inspired the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, also incensed by September 11, to make his film Submission, which overlaid verses of the Koran onto a naked female body as it explored the alleged oppression of women in Islam.
Van Gogh's 2004 murder, by an Islamic extremist, effectively completed a revolution in the Netherlands. Non-European immigration has virtually stopped; 26,000 failed asylum seekers are being expelled. Migrants are being told to speak Dutch and integrate.
The terrorism in the US is not the only cause of the upheavals in Holland, but it is central to them. A poll from June 2004, before van Gogh's murder, found that 86 per cent of people of Dutch descent felt threatened by Dutch Muslims (who are one million in a total population of 16 million).
The shockwaves have radiated far past the Netherlands. Belgian councils have banned the burqa. Italy has closed radical mosques. The German state of Baden Wurttemberg has brought in what is called the "Muslim test", in which Muslim applicants for citizenship are asked about their views on September 11, gay relationships and whether their teenage daughters are allowed to attend swimming classes.
And so to Denmark last year, when a children's author was unable to find an artist who would dare illustrate a children's book on Muhammad. Presumably they knew Muslims consider it idolatrous to make images of the Prophet. But what was most on their minds, by all reports, was the van Gogh murder.
When he heard about this, Flemming Rose, culture editor of the conservative newspaper Jyllands-Posten, was annoyed. To "see how deep this self-censorship lies in the Danish public", he asked 40 cartoonists to draw Muhammad. Twelve took up the dare, three drew Muhammad as a terrorist, and another chain reaction was set off.
September 11 matters in Europe because, while the US Muslim population is relatively small and well integrated, Europe has 15 million Muslims. They have high rates of unemployment. They are some of the continent's most marginalised people, and some of the most angry. A US study last year found that of 373 jihadists who plotted terrorist acts in Europe and North America, a quarter were western European nationals. Several newspapers which republished the cartoons justified the decision by saying they refused to be cowed by fundamentalists who wished to silence debate. The implication was that Muslims, or at least radical Muslims, are powerful.
But that is not how most European Muslims see it. They feel embattled, discriminated against, even despised. Every day more of their young people are drawn to radical Islam's conspiracy theories of a global plot against Muslims. Publishing the cartoons is likely to feed their sense of grievance and, at times, victimhood.
Naser Khader is a liberal Muslim MP in Denmark who thinks the episode has helped extremists on both sides. "The campaign against the caricatures is a clear manoeuvre on the part of Muslim radicals," he told the German newspaper Die Zeit. But he also says when an MP from the far-right Danish People's Party calls Islam a "cancer" and no one objects, it "prepares the ground" for extremism.
At a protest in London on Friday, one young person was dressed as a suicide bomber; some people carried placards calling for beheading of the cartoonists. As a response it was fanatical and out of all proportion. It also underlined Khader's point: publication has emboldened those for whom the prospect of a clash of civilisations is enticing. On its own, that is not an argument against publication. Causing offence, even rage, is an inherent and necessary risk that goes with free speech.
But the right to free speech does not exist in isolation from other values, such as empathy and respect. As a Guardian editorial says, no Western newspaper would publish anti-semitic cartoons of the kind that were published in Nazi Germany and are still published in many Arab countries.
Yes, the editors were free to run the cartoons. But what greater good was served in doing so? As Khader and others have said, a struggle for the soul of Islam is under way in Europe. Victory could mean a new form of Islam, comfortable with secularism, pluralism, dissent and women's rights. Defeat is too awful to contemplate. It is impossible to see how the cartoon wars have nudged the larger struggle in the right direction.
I have a question. Are these cartoons likely to complicate our mission in Iraq, or make things more difficult for our troops?
Cartoons are here...
http://knewshound.blogspot.com/
heers,
knewshound
That is a definate Yes. Unfortunately.
HOLY COW!!! The tom toles cartoon is exactly what I've been thinking since this whole thing started...
Liberals outnumber the Muslims 15-1. I'd say it's a tossup.
On the part of the muslims, yes. But, then, what can you expect of a "religion" whose stated goal is to enslave the world with force, and covert by the sword, the alternative to conversion being death or onerous tax for living?
Yeah, I mean, you figure at SOME point it'll start to sink in with people who the hell we're dealing with. What a bunch of freaks.
No controversy is too dumb for a bunch of 7th century troglodytes making up their $#!+ as they go along.
The thing I love is the Islamic spokeshole comparing the "Muhammed" cartoons to the ones that the Nazis published in the '30's depicting Jews...
...which are, in fact, quite similar, in both subject and slander, to cartoons run daily in Egyptian, Saudi, Syrian, and other muslims countries newspapers in modern times.
These morons are too damm dense to even recognize irony when it is spewing from their own ignorant pie holes. A more humorless people you will never find.
So in Germany one of the proofs that you are not an Islamofacist is that you are cool with homosexuality?
I wouldn't get in.
I've seen the contemporary Islamic state cartoons you refer to. You are right. they are as sick as it gets.
I don't think they would.
The ones that are going to oppose us in Iraq are already pissed.
This won't really do much otherwise. We had nothing to do with it.
Now don't get me wrong, the rabble rousers like Mookie and Zarqawi will attempt to use it, but it won't matter much.
If our troops are endangered by any mild criticism of islam anywhere in the western world, maybe, instead of censoring the criticism, we should be fighting the war differently. If we can't criticize the underpinnings of jihad (ie Mohammed and his life and teachings) we will never be safe or free.
A did a quick web search for Danish products and didn't find anything useable. However, the Danes made high quality berdan primed .30-06 M2 ball which shows up now and then. The ammo packed in Garand clips seems long gone but there was some packed in Springfield clips not too long ago. The headstamp is AMA.
It's time for a huge push back by the West, and the most important part of that push back is to push the Mooslims back to their own countries.
They do not pose a serious threat to us unless we let them within our midst. They must be sent home if we are to have peace and security in our own land. We must not allow the diversity seekers to bring throatcutters to our land; let them move to the third world if they want diversity.
This is Iran's muted response to the Security Council referral. The cartoons were their cover. 6 month old cartoons do not accidentally become the issue on the same day the Iranian mullahs are given their detention slips.
the US Muslim population is relatively small and well integrated
They are? You could've fooled me.
Well done!
Article: "Victory could mean a new form of Islam, comfortable with secularism, pluralism, dissent and women's rights."
If this were to happen, they would not be able to call it Islam any more.
***If this were to happen, then 2+2 will = 5.
I imagine under continuing international pressure, Islam's inherent intolerance would submerge and lurk like a Nile Crocodile waiting for the opportune time to surface and attack.
The best way to defeat a narcissist is the mock him. Narcissists cannot stand criticism. Mohammed couldn't stand criticism and has his critics assassinated. Mohammed was a narcissist. People who follow Mohammed’s example also become narcissists. These cartoons my friends are the opening salvos in the war on Islam.
Islam cannot be destroyed by military means alone. The ideology that drives it must also be attacked. Find their weakness and exploit it. The worse they behave and react to such idiotic musings as cartoons only inflate their hypocrisy leading to more such attacks. Islam needs to be dished more mockery and ridicule.
The best part about this situation is that one only needs to tell the truth about Islam and its prophet to mock it. Mohammed was a Narcissistic, pedophile, murderer, torturer, terrorist, slave owner & driver, caravan robber, treaty breaker, war monger, bigot, racist and hate monger, psychopath WORSE than Hitler (at least Hitler wasn't a pedophile) who's alter ego Allah is a cherry picked, one of a thousand pagan gods worshiped by pre-Islam pagan Arabs. And the best part about such accusations and mockery is that it is 100% irrefutably true.
John 8:32
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
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