| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:32 pm Post subject: Anti-Muslim Cartoons Tied to Neo-Con Fanatic |
| Zionist neocon 'clash of civilizations' behind Mohammed Cartoon....
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=83815
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=85046
Click on the Pipes segment after scrolling down to it at the following C-SPAN 'Washington Journal' URL (the call is the last one in his segment as PNAC was mentioned to the Sherman guy whose segment is linked below as well - PNAC was also addressed in the Jerome Corsi segment which came on right after the call to Pipes in which he was called a Zionist Jew who wants to bomb Iran for Israel):
http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Series,WJE&ArchiveDays=30
Flemming Rose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemming_Rose#Life
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Anti-Muslim Cartoons Tied to Neo-Con Fanatic
Understanding the Roots of the Anti-Muslim Cartoon Scandal
From the Feb. 20th, 2006 American Free Press, Volume VI #8
www.americanfreepress.net
by Christopher Bollyn
The mainstream media coverage of the anti‑Islamic cartoons ignores the fact that the publication of the images was a "calculated offense" commissioned by a Danish colleague of the neo‑con ideologue Daniel Pipes and was meant to incite violence and promote the "clash of civilizations."
After Danish embassies in three Muslim nations were attacked and set alight by angry mobs protesting the anti‑Islamic cartoons published in a Danish newspaper the mainstream media turned its attention to the controversial images and the violent reactions they provoked. Invariably, however, the controlled press overlooked the important fact that the offensive images were commissioned and published by a Danish colleague of the neo‑conservative extremist Daniel Pipes.
The anti‑Muslim cartoon scandal has turned out to be a major step forward for the Zionist neo‑cons and their longplanned "clash of civilizations," the artificially constructed conflict designed to pit the so‑called Christian West against the Islamic world.
"The rioting that has erupted across the Middle East . . . is a predictable if overwrought reaction to what now seems like a calculated offense against Islam," The Miami Herald wrote in its lead editorial on Feb. 7.
"It is not necessary to reprint the offending cartoons for U.S. readers to understand the issue," The Miami Herald, a Knight‑Ridder paper. "A religious taboo was violated, and those involved knew full well what they were doing. The incident fell all too neatly into the hands of those who would exacerbate tensions between Europe and the Muslim world."
Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of ]yllands‑Posten (JP), is the person who commissioned and published the offensive cartoons knowing that the images would exacerbate tensions between Europe and the Islamic nations.
Rose is a colleague of the neo‑con Pipes who visited the Philadelphia office of Pipes' Zionist web site called Middle East Forum in 2004.
Rose then penned a sympathetic article about Pipes entitled "The Threat from Islamism," which promoted his extreme anti‑Islamic views without mentioning the fact that Pipes is a rabid Zionist extremist.
Pipes, the son of the Polish‑born Jewish neo‑con professor Richard E. Pipes, is a Zionist of the most extreme sort, who says that the Palestinian people need to have a "change of heart" that should be brought about after being utterly defeated by the Israeli military.
"How is a change of heart achieved? It is achieved by an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat," Pipes said in 2003. "The Palestinians need to be defeated even more than Israel needs to defeat them."
After three Danish embassies were attacked by angry Muslim mobs, CNN turned to Pipes, its carefully chosen Middle East analyst, to explain the cause of the widespread anger in the Muslim world. Rather than discuss the origin of the anti‑Muslim images, which had provoked the protests, Pipes blamed radical clerics for having circulated the offensive images.
CNN failed to mention that Pipes and Rose are Zionist neo‑con colleagues while Pipes blamed Muslims for the violent protests, saying that "extremists" had used the offensive cartoons published by Rose "to rally their people and become more agitatedly anti‑Western."
While there have been massive protests throughout the Muslim world against Denmark for the offense against Islam, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni by her side, blamed Syria and Iran for the violent protests in Damascus and Tehran.
"Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes," Rice said. "And the world ought to call them on it."
In an article entitled "Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism," written as the Danish embassies smoldered, Pipes framed the "key issue at stake in the battle over the 12 Danish cartoons.
"Will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise," Pipes wrote. "Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not."
Repeated questions to Rose, Pipes, and the editors of JP about whether Europeans should also have the right to "insult and blaspheme" the Zionist version of the Holocaust went unanswered.
During the last decade, there have been several thousand people fined and hundreds put in European prisons for having written or spoken about the Holocaust or Jewish related affairs in a manner deemed illegal.
Framing the cartoon scandal in this way and forcing a false choice between defending the "free press" or the Muslim protesters, Pipes reveals his hidden hand behind the publication of the cartoons, which now appears to be a well‑laid trap into which a number of newspapers and populist parties have fallen.
There is also a clear connection between the publication of the anti‑Muslim cartoons and the secretive Bilderberg group.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister and frequent Bilderberg attendee, for example, has refused to issue a format apology, which would cost Denmark nothing but could save the nation from further losses to its exporting business and national prestige. Denmark has lost significant market share in Muslim nations due to a consumer boycott of Danish products.
The damage caused to Denmark's image, prestige and economy is likely to be severe and long lasting. Danish lives are also clearly endangered.
Rasmussen's refusal to apologize, however, suggests that the "calculated offense," which has led to increased tension between Europeans and the Muslim world, was intentional. One would think that Rose, as the person directly responsible for the "calculated offense" to millions of Muslims, would be charged under Europe's anti‑racism laws, not to speak of the severe damage his offensive cartoons caused to Denmark and the Danish people.
Merete Eldrup, the managing director of IP/Politikens Hus, the parent company that owns Jyllands‑Posters, is married to Anders Eldrup of Denmark a Bilderberg attendee for the last five years. Eldrup is chairman of Danish Oil and
Natural Gas.
*********************************************
“Why should they, the Americans, have trusted us? We were a bunch of Russians, socialist Russians.”
-- Isser Harel, former head of Mossad, speaking of the unlikely union between America and the Marxist state of Israel
Last edited by Alpha on Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:44 am; edited 3 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject: Neo-cons use Denmark as their latest tool... |
| February 5/6 2006 -- Neo-cons use Denmark as their latest tool to bring about the "Clash of Civilizations." Denmark is at the center of the ongoing neo-con plot to bring about a bloody military confrontation between the West and Islam. This "Clash of Civilizations" is a hallmark of the neo-con philosophy and is most exemplified in the writings of Prof. Samuel Huntington and Daniel Pipes.
This follows a pattern of neo-con activity designed to ratchet up tensions. The latest example was the rapid spread of arson across France and Belgium involving neo-Nazis, skinheads, and false flag agents that was blamed entirely on Muslims upset about the deaths of two Muslim youths in a northern Paris suburb. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy stoked the flames with his rhetoric about Muslim "scum" just as Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen defended the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in an offensive manner in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten as a freedom of speech issue.
Rasmussen, who is one of George W. Bush's leading supporters in the war in Iraq (Denmark has sent several hundreds troops), governs with the support of the neo-fascist, xenophobic, and inappropriately-named Danish "People's Party." After riots in Arhus, Denmark (at the same time as the arson attacks spread across France, Belgium, and a few German cities), other newspapers in the West began publishing the same cartoons. Danish embassies in Damascus and Beirut have now been set on fire and tensions (and terrorist alerts) have been raised in many countries where the cartoons have been republished. Coffee mugs, T-shirts, and key chains are now being sold on the Internet depicting the offensive images. Cui bono? Who benefits? These tactics, of course, are very convenient for the neo-cons.
Neo-con media outlets such as The New York Sun, Fox News, and others are having a field day with the Muslim riots that have spread around the world in protest over the cartoons just as they had with the French "Muslim" arson attacks. Two New Zealand papers -- The Dominion Post in Wellington and The Press in Christchurch, have published their own controversial cartoons of Mohammed. The papers are owned by Australia's Fairfax Group, which also owns Melbourne's Age, and which was once financially connected to indicted neo-con Lord Conrad Black's scandal-ridden Hollinger publishing empire, which also includes arch neo-con Richard Perle. The Fairfax Group generally adheres to the neo-con corporatist party line.
The neo-cons ignore and even relish in the offensive nature of the inflammatory cartoons depicting Mohammed as a bomb throwing terrorist and pedophile. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have made similar comments about the Prophet that Muslims consider blasphemous. What would the neo-cons say if newspapers published cartoons showing a shady looking Moses stealing gold and silver artifacts from the Pharaoh's palace before high tailing it across the Red Sea in the middle of the night? Or a wine-drunk Jesus cavorting with prostitutes in the red light district of Jerusalem? There is no doubt that rabbis and evangelical preachers would be calling for the heads of the offending cartoonists and editors. They've done so for far less.
Moses: "I grabbed ten of the Pharaoh's best urns. I have a list here." Jesus: "I've got the wine. Where are the Jerusalem girls?" See why Muslims are so outraged by unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed? The neo-cons relish in constant religious warfare, which they have now re-coined "the Long War."
With so many hotheads in the three Abrahamic tradition religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), such inflammatory speech is like yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. The Danish Prime Minister is wrong when he states that the offensive cartoons are protected speech. He would certainly not defend someone who yelled fire in a crowded Copenhagen theater. And struggling Danish farmers, bakers, and fishermen will now pay the price for the boycott of Danish exports by Muslim countries. Lego stockholders will suffer from a boycott of the toy company's products.
But Rasmussen, like Sarkozy, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Netanyahu, Jack Straw, and Australia's John Howard, is marching to the martial music of the neo-cons. They are the shock troops for the Clash of Civilizations, Project for a New American Century, The Long War, A Clean Break, and all the other neo-con plots, conspiracies, and contrivances. It's clearly time to investigate the neo-cons, their networks, their funding sources, their media ownership and investments, their doctrines, their false flag terrorist operations, and their political contributions. Just as Islamist terrorists, they should be rounded up as dangerous members of society and detained until they no longer pose a threat to public safety and the global commonwealth.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 9:09 am Post subject: Flemming Rose and the Straussian Art of Provocation |
| Flemming Rose and the Straussian Art of Provocation
Tuesday February 07th 2006, 3:24 pm
www.kurtnimmo.com
As suspected, and claimed on this blog over the weekend, the inflammatory anti-Muslim cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were a deliberate provocation designed to outrage and incite Muslims and thus engender support in Europe and America for the manufactured “clash of civilizations” engineered by the Straussian neocons. As Christopher Bollyn writes for the American Free Press, the neocon operative behind the cartoon scheme is Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who has “has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons.” Rose “traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares ‘militant Islam’ with fascism and communism,” Bollyn reveals.
Daniel Pipes is one of the more virulent and hateful of the Straussian neocons, famous for his racist and xenophobic statement that Muslim immigrants are “brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene,” an attitude straight out of the Nazi school of racial hyperbole (a philosophy embraced by no small number of Jabotinsky Likudites and their fellow travelers among the traitorous Straussian neocons).
Bollyn continues:
“Agents of certain persuasion” are behind the egregious affront to Islam in order to provoke Muslims, Professor Mikael Rothstein of the University of Copenhagen told the BBC. The key “agent” is Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of JP, who commissioned cartoonists to produce the blasphemous images and then published them in Denmark's leading morning paper last September….
Rose told the international paper owned by The New York Times that “he would not publish a cartoon of Israel's Ariel Sharon strangling a Palestinian baby, since that could be construed as ‘racist.’”
As Daniel Pipes and his ilk have repeatedly demonstrated, it is not racist to characterize Arabs and Muslims as “brown-skinned peoples” suffering from bad hygiene, although it is a crime to take the apartheid state of Israel to task for murdering Palestinian children. But then, as Lenni Brenner has documented, the followers of Ze'ev Jabotinsky—and his political creation, the reactionary Likud Party in Israel—are not only well versed in fascism, but murderous racism as well.
As for the unapologetic stance of the Danes in regard to publishing the cartoons, Bollyn comments:
There is clearly a more sinister reason why the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen refuses to issue a formal apology as demanded by Arab and Muslim governments. The hard-line position taken by Rasmussen, an ally in the “war on terror,” has more to do with advancing the “clash of civilizations” than defending free speech in Europe….
There is a deeper reason behind the publication of the offensive cartoons. Given the unapologetic position taken by the Danish government and the editors it appears very likely that tension with Islamic nations will increase and the international crisis will deepen. This is, after all, exactly what the global planners behind the “clash of civilizations” want.
The completely predictable reaction among Muslims sets the stage for violence and “false-flag” terror attacks as Europeans prepare to host the Olympics in Turin, Italy. The Turin-based La Stampa irresponsibly published the cartoons on Feb. 1, two days after Milan's Corriere della Sera.
The anti-Islamic cartoon scandal is no laughing matter. If and when a terror attack does occur and the cartoons and angry Muslims are blamed for being the cause, the reason they were published will become clear. Europeans will become increasingly polarized and hostility to Islam will grow.
Of course, as the Straussian neocons prepare the next phase of their total war against Islam master plan—attacking Iran and possibly soon after Syria—tacit support from Europe will be a plus, especially after the false flag Gladio-like terror attacks in Madrid produced undesirable results (the Spanish people rejected José María Aznar, a neocon toady and grandson of a prominent fascist journalist).
So if terror attacks do indeed occur during the Olympics in Turin, we can point an accusatory finger quite naturally in the direction of the Straussian neocons, linked to Operation Gladio terrorism through Michael Ledeen, who is connected to Francesco Pazienza and the P2 Masonic Lodge responsible for the CIA-NATO sponsored Strategy of Tension terrorism campaign in Italy (an Italian criminal court convicted Pazienza in 1985 of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of criminals and terrorists, among other offenses, in relation to the Gladio bombing of a Bologna train station, killing more than 80 people; see Jeff Wells’ Rigorous Intuition).
“One of P-2's specialties was the art of provocation,” writes Mark Zepezauer. “Leftist organizations like the Red Brigades were infiltrated, financed and / or created, and the resulting acts of terrorism, like the assassination of Italy's premier in 1978 and the bombing of the railway station in Bologna in 1980, were blamed on the left. The goal of this ’strategy of tension’ was to convince Italian voters that the left was violent and dangerous—by helping make it so.”
In the same way, the Straussian neocons, taking a page from the P-2 provocation playbook, are attempting to convince Europeans and Americans that Muslims are “violent and dangerous” by “helping make it so,” as Bollyn's revelations about Flemming Rose's role in the inflammatory publication of the anti-Muslim cartoons in Jyllands-Posten and other newspapers make obvious | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:24 pm Post subject: Secularist Stupidity and Religious Wars |
| Secularist Stupidity and Religious Wars
by Patrick J. Buchanan
That demagogues and agitators are exploiting those cartoons of Mohammed to advance a war of civilizations and expel Europeans from the Middle East seems undeniable.
But that does not excuse the paralyzing stupidity of that Danish paper in running those cartoons – or the arrogant irresponsibility of European newspapers in plastering those cartoons all over their front pages.
The storm first broke last September, when Jyllands-Posten published 12 caricatures of Mohammed, including a lampoon of the Prophet with a terrorist bomb as a turban. In the Islamic faith, any depiction of the face of Mohammed is forbidden.
The Danish paper knew this. It published the cartoons to protest "the rejection of modern, secular society" by Muslims. The cartoons were thus a defiant provocation. And they succeeded.
The Middle East responded with a boycott of Danish foods and goods. But when, in the name of press solidarity, Le Soir and Le Monde in Paris, El Pais in Madrid and Die Welt in Berlin republished the cartoons on page one, Islam exploded. For this was an in-your-face declaration by the secularist media of the European Union that it will exercise its right to insult any God, any Prophet, any faith, whenever it so chooses.
"Enough lessons from these reactionary bigots," said Serge Faubert, editor of Le Soir. "Just because the Quran bans images of Mohammed doesn't mean non-Muslims have to submit to this."
Faubert, however, is not a Danish soldier in the Shi'ite sector of Iraq. Innocents will pay the price of his heroism.
The U.S. State Department seemed to empathize with Muslim rage, stating that "inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is unacceptable." But, within hours, State had retreated to neutral ground: "While we share the offense that Muslims have taken at these images, we at the same time vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view."
As of today the Danish consulate in Beirut has been burned, Danish embassies have been stormed, and Danes are fleeing the Middle East. Europeans are getting out of the West Bank, Gaza and Beirut, where mobs are attacking embassies and Christian churches.
Islamic countries have recalled ambassadors from Copenhagen. People have been injured and property destroyed in mob assaults as far away as Indonesia. Relations between the West and the Islamic world have been dealt another rupturing blow.
And for what? What was the purpose of this juvenile idiocy by the Europress? Is this what freedom of the press is all about – the freedom to insult the faith of a billion people and start a religious war?
Can Europeans be that ignorant of the power of the press to inflame when Bismarck's editing of just a few words in the Ems telegram ignited the Franco-Prussian war? Did Europeans learn nothing from the Salman Rushdie episode? Or the firestorm that gripped the Islamic world when Christian ministers in the United States called Mohammed a "terrorist"?
European governments are wringing their hands over the rage and violence unleashed, but they seem paralyzed. What is the matter? Why cannot they denounce press irresponsibility while defending press freedom? Even friends of the West like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have denounced these cartoons as insults to Islamic values and deeply damaging to Western interests.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw deplored republication of the cartoons as "insensitive ... disrespectful ... wrong." But German Interior Minister Wolfgang Shauble haughtily dissented, "Here, in Europe, governments have nothing to say about which publisher publishes what."
What hypocrisy. When it comes to what Germans are most sensitive about, Hitler and the Holocaust, they are ruthless censors. British historian David Irving has spent three months in a Viennese prison awaiting trial on Feb. 20 for speeches he made 15 years ago in Austria. Skeptics and deniers of the Holocaust are prosecuted, fined and imprisoned in Europe with the enthusiastic endorsement of the European press.
Nor are we all that different. Sen. Trent Lott was ousted as majority leader for a birthday-party compliment to 100-year-old Strom Thurmond. Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker was almost lynched for saying he considers New York a social pigsty. There were demands that Rocker undergo psychiatric counseling.
We have "speech codes" in colleges and "hate crimes" laws to protect minorities from abusive remarks. But newspapers that hail these codes throw a blanket of "artistic freedom" over scatological art that degrades religious symbols – from putting a figure of Christ in a jar of urine to a "painting" of the Virgin Mary surrounded by female genitalia and elephant dung that hung in a Brooklyn museum.
What has happened in Europe is that the secular press, which loves to mock the beliefs and symbols of religious faith, has now insulted a deadly serious religion that answers insults with action.
February 7, 2006
Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and A Republic Not An Empire.
Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan36.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 1:58 am Post subject: Jyllands-Posten will not publish holocaust cartoons |
| Jyllands-Posten will not publish holocaust cartoons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Danes' 'no' to Holocaust cartoons
The top editor of the Danish newspaper whose cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad sparked outrage throughout the Islamic world said he would not print Holocaust cartoons offered by an Iranian newspaper.
Editor-in-Chief Carsten Juste said his newspaper Jyllands-Posten "in no circumstances will publish Holocaust cartoons from an Iranian newspaper."
A prominent Iranian newspaper has said it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the Muhammad caricatures.
Earlier, culture editor Flemming Rose said of the Iranian cartoons: "We would consider publishing them, but we will not make a decision before we have seen the cartoons."
"I have committed an error," Rose said in an interview with Danish television, adding: "I am 100% with the newspaper's line and Carsten Juste in this case."
Juste has rejected suggestions that he step down in the wake of the furore, which has brought sometimes-fatal protest outbursts and the burning of two Danish embassies in the Middle East.
In a brief statement on the paper's website, Juste said, "I do not feel called ... in that direction."
The drawings - including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb - have touched a nerve in part because Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of the Prophet Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.
Jyllands-Posten said on January 30 it regretted it had offended Muslims and apologised to them, but stood by its decision to print the cartoons, saying it was within Danish law. Two days later, Juste said he would not have printed the cartoons had he foreseen the consequences.
Jens Kaiser, the chief editor for the broadsheet's Sunday edition, said it had turned down five small cartoons of Jesus' resurrection three years ago that had been sent in unsolicited.
© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=203972006 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:04 pm Post subject: European papers join Danish fray |
| http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/02/01/news/denmark.php
European papers join Danish fray
By Alan Cowell The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2006
COPENHAGEN In a remarkable escalation of a dispute over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, newspapers in several European countries reprinted the images on Wednesday, supporting a Danish newspaper that triggered a huge outcry in the Islamic world by publishing them initially.
The newspapers' action fed into a sharpening debate here over freedom of expression, human rights and what one Danish editor, Flemming Rose, called a "clash of civilizations" between secular Western democracies and Islamic societies.
Indeed, said Rose, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten - the newspaper which first published the cartoons last September - "this is a far bigger story than just the question of 12 cartoons in a small Danish newspaper."
"This is about the question of integration and how compatible is the religion of Islam with a modern secular society - how much does an immigrant have to give up and how much does the receiving culture have to compromise," he said in an interview.
In recent days, Denmark has become the target of a widespread boycott of its goods, like dairy products and pharmaceuticals, in the Muslim world, its diplomats have been summoned to be dressed down in Tehran and Baghdad, and protesters have taken to the streets of Gaza.
While Jyllands-Posten has apologized for giving offense, it has not apologized for publishing the cartoons, one of which depicts the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Images of Muhammad are regarded as blasphemous by many Muslims.
The Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has rejected demands by Arab governments for an official apology, saying, "A Danish government cannot apologize on the part of a Danish paper. I can't call a newspaper and tell them what to put in it. That's not how our society works."
Rose called the decision not to apologize "a key issue of principle."
In support of the Danish position, newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland reprinted some of the cartoons on Wednesday. A small Norwegian evangelical magazine, Magazinet, also published the cartoons last month.
The dispute has been likened to a string of earlier cultural confrontations between Islam and the West, beginning with the death sentence declared in 1989 on the British author Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran after the publication of "The Satanic Verses." In 2004, the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was murdered after making a film called "Submission" that dealt with violence against women in Islamic societies.
Robert Menard, secretary general of Reporters Sans Frontières, a Paris-based body that monitors media developments, said: "All countries in Europe should be behind the Danes and Danish authorities to defend the principle that a newspaper can write what it wishes to even if it offends people."
Arab regimes "do not understand there can be a complete separation between what is written in a newspaper and what the Danish government says," he said in a telephone interview. "I understand that it may shock Muslims, but being shocked is part of the price of being informed."
He noted, too, that many attacks on Denmark came from countries like Libya and Saudi Arabia, "where there's no press freedom" and where governments routinely steered newspapers.
Several Muslim leaders in Copenhagen have said they accept the apology from Jyllands-Posten, but in the Middle East, Arab and Islamic governments continued to express outrage.
On Wednesday, Syria became the latest Arab country after Saudi Arabia and Libya to withdraw its ambassador from Denmark, saying publication of the cartoons "constitutes a violation of the sacred principles of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims," according to SANA, Syria's state press agency.
The Danish Embassy in Damascus was evacuated after a bomb threat on Wednesday, but no bomb was found. On Tuesday, the offices of Jyllands-Posten were evacuated under similar circumstances.
The contentious cartoons include one showing the Prophet Muhammad telling dead suicide bombers that paradise has run out of virgins - a reference to the 72 virgins accorded a Muslim martyr.
In Paris, the newspaper France Soir, printed all 12 cartoons, saying it did so "not from an appetite for gratuitous provocation, but because they constitute the subject of a controversy on a global scale which has done nothing to maintain balance and mutual limits in democracy, respect of religious beliefs and freedom of expression."
The French newspaper ran a headline declaring: "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God." It published a cartoon showing Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods on a cloud. The Christian god was depicted saying: "Don't complain, Muhammad. We've all been caricatured before."
The newspaper declared: "No religious dogma can impose its view on a democratic and secular society."
Arnaud Levy, editor-in-chief of France Soir, said there had been no coordination between European editors. Asked if they had been in touch to publish the cartoons simultaneously, he said in a telephone interview: "Absolutely not." A commentary in France Soir declared: "Enough lessons from these reactionary bigots! Just because the Koran bans images of Muhammad doesn't mean non-Muslims have to submit to this."
The decision by France Soir to publish the cartoons drew a sharp response from French Muslims. Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, called the publication of the cartoons a "provocation" and an abuse of press freedom, adding that it reflected "Islamophobia" and was disrespectful of the world's more than one billion Muslims. "The publication of the cartoons can only revive tensions in Europe and the world at a time when we are trying to unite people," he said.
In Germany, the conservative Die Welt daily printed one image on its front page and declared in an editorial: "The protests from Muslims would be taken more seriously if they were less hypocritical. When Syrian television showed drama documentaries in prime time depicting rabbis as cannibals, the imams were quiet."
Dan Bilefsky of the International Herald Tribune contributed reporting from Paris. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
