Posted on 02/19/2006 8:07:38 AM PST by janetjanet998
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, smashing the windows of a guard post but failing to push through the gates. Several people were injured.
Pakistani security forces, meanwhile, sealed off the capital of Islamabad to block a planned mass demonstration and fired tear gas and gunshots to chase off protesters. In Turkey, tens of thousands gathered in Istanbul chanting slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States.
Protests over the cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have been republished in other European publications and elsewhere, have swept across the Muslim world, growing into mass outlets for rage against the West in general, and Israel and the United States in particular.
Christians also have become targets. Pakistani Muslims protesting in the southern city of Sukkur ransacked and burned a church Sunday after hearing accusations that a Christian man had burned pages of the Quran, Islam's holy book.
That incident came a day after Muslims protesting in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri attacked Christians and burned 15 churches in a three-hour rampage that killed at least 15 people. Some 30 other people have died during protests over the cartoons that erupted about three weeks ago.
In Jakarta, about 400 people marched to the heavily fortified U.S. mission in the center of the city, behind a banner reading "We are ready to attack the enemies of the Prophet."
Protesters throwing stones and brandishing wooden staves tried to break through the gates. They set fire to U.S. flags and a poster of President Bush and smashed the windows of a guard outpost before dispersing after a few minutes.
The U.S. Embassy called the attacks deplorable, describing them as acts of "thuggery."
A protest organizer said the West, and particularly the United States, is attacking Islam.
"They want to destroy Islam through the issue of terrorism ... and all those things are engineered by the United States," said Maksuni, who only uses one name.
"We are fighting America fiercely this time," he said. "And we also are fighting Denmark."
In Pakistan, where protests last week left five people dead, police put up roadblocks around Islamabad to keep people from entering the capital for a planned mass protest called by a coalition of six hard-line Islamic parties, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal United Action Forum.
Authorities also detained several lawmakers and Islamic leaders during raids in three cities and announced they would arrest anyone joining a gathering of more than five people to prevent the demonstration.
Opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a senior figure in the Islamic coalition, was eventually given permission to lead a small rally through a square in the city center. The protesters chanted "God is great!" and "Any friend of America is a traitor."
But when about 100 other protesters tried to reach the square, officers fired tear gas and at least one gunshot to chase them off. More gunshots were heard later in the city, but it wasn't clear who fired them. At least two policemen were injured, one bleeding from the head. Several demonstrators also were hurt.
A crowd of 700 people, some throwing stones at police, tried to march toward Islamabad's heavily guarded diplomatic enclave about 1.3 miles from the square but with blocked by troops in armored personnel carriers.
Police also blocked about 1,500 protesters from reaching Islamabad from the city of Peshawar by putting shipping containers and sandbags on a bridge along a highway leading to the capital, said Mohammed Iqbal, a key member of the religious alliance.
Elsewhere in Pakistan, about 600 people staged a protest in Chaman, a town near the Afghan border, burning Danish flags and an effigy of the Danish prime minister.
Such protests prompted Denmark on Sunday to temporarily recall its ambassador to Pakistan, Bent Wigotski, because it was impossible for him "to perform his job duties during the present circumstances," the Danish Foreign Ministry said in a statement
My logic always improves dear. Its your dementia thats ongoing ;^} May God bless and keep your son safe!
Thank you, sir! And don't worry about hurting my feelings.......it's merely a flesh wound. ;)
"OK, we'll call it a draw!"
If it's important enough to go to war over, then it's important enough to use everything at our disposal to accomplish victory in the shortest time possible, with the least amount of casualties on our side.
Let the politicians clean up the mess afterword's, wars should be fought by generals.
Bump.
And the beat goes on.....
Our leaders keep trying to appease these rapid extremists because they refuse to understand that Islam is a culture of hate.
They are taught from the cradle to hate. They hate Christians, Jews, athiests, Hindus, everyone -- including themselves.
we say Religion of Peace....
You forgot the second part ".... AND UNDERSTANDING"
:o)
Okay, the Indo-ragheads wanna play, eh? Fine. Enact a new rule: any unidentified group of people approaching within 100 feet of the embassy gates are shot by US troops.
LOL!
Darn Carter! Keep telling the world how the U.S. deserves to be hated!!
I blame the lefties on this one! They are the ones who announce to the world how we are greedy imperialists.
I think it will get worse before it gets better!
Hold your breath wating for that...
Doing so may very well kill you.........
That was my question. The US hasn't published this stuff and yet we're being attacked. These mongrels are nuts!
I can only see one civilization here.
If we don't have the stomach for another conventional war, WHAT on God's Green Earth makes you think we have the stomach for a nuclear one?
If the time comes and the chips are down, we will have another conventional war, but this time it'll be NATO, not just the US.
Yes,stop giving terrorist money!!!!!
It ain't gonna happen. No invasion of Iran, until they blow up a US city with an a-bomb.
That's why I think we'd have the stomach for a nuclear one. Because they'll attack us first.
On the other hand, the Dems will say that there is no proof that the Iranians did it.
I don't think they will get to that point.
They wouldn't hit us first anyway.
They will go after Israel.
THEN it will be on.
No way. First, they'd be bombing a Muslim land if they did that. Second, they'd realize that if you're going to use the bomb, you use it on the guy who's most likely to attack you. They'd of course wait until they had a delivery device, then they'd sneak a bomb into NY harbor on a tanker. They'd detonate it and pretend they had nothing to do with it. And then if we retaliated, they'd be able to use their own delivery devices against us.
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