Apparent Danish Muslims Apologizing for the Cartoons
The World Today – Cartoons of Muslim prophet spark free speech debate
The cartoons were first printed last September — they include drawings of Muhammad wearing a headdress shaped like a bomb, while another shows him saying that paradise was running short of virgins for suicide bombers.
The controversy was given new life when they were recently reprinted by a Norwegian magazine.
They’ve trigged violent protests in the Middle East, Danish products have been boycotted and death threats have been issued. Saudi Arabia and Libya have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.
Staff at the paper which initially published the cartoons, Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, have had to evacuate their offices twice after bomb threats.
From Der Spiegel there is this report:
In Aarhus, Denmark, an editor says the societal debate unleashed by his paper’s controversial decision to publish political cartoons of the prophet Muhammad has justified his move. In the town, many residents are standing behind Jyllands-Posten…
The call came at five o’clock in the evening. A man warned the receptionist in English: There’s a bomb in the building and it’s going to go off in 10 minutes. A few seconds later, more than 200 employees — editors, secretaries and printing staff — fled the offices of Jyllands-Posten in Denmark’s second-largest city, Aarhus. The police quickly turned up on the scene, as did the journalists, photographers and satellite trucks.
So let me get this straight. Mohammed (nobody has any clue as to what he looks like), is portrayed in a silly cartoon with a bomb on his head and suddenly a bunch of people protest this by threatening to bomb. Do any of these people see an irony here? And talk about easily insulted.
I should mention that the Danes, unlike the nearby Dutch and the Swedes clamped down on letting Arabs and Algerians and other ethnic groups immigrate at will. It will be interesting to see how this tempest plays out. This is extremely undercovered in the USA media (as usual).
related link:
Copies of many of the offending cartoons (and more) archived here on the Atlas Shrugged site. The cartoon that shows a fellow in heaven saying, “Stop, stop, we’ve run out of virgins” to a line of guys who appear to have blown themselves up is just plain funny to any Westerner (with a sense of humor). It’s not insulting in any Western way. It’s a joke. It’s a gag. Non-Western people who cannot accept this sort of poignant humor should not be in Western countries nor should they do business with Western people. Thus they will never see the cartoon in the first place and be happy campers. Reacting with bomb threats is just bad. The people in the picture above should be ashamed of themselves.
Your comments is right on, its only cartoons !
Cartoons express opinions – thats all.
But maybe – the pen is mightier that the Sword (bomb)
By the way – how many read danish newspapers in muslim countries anyway ?
And now over to the serious stuff – I like your input in TWiT.
We are still auditoning for the babe mascot.
We (in western, democratic, and where we tolerate differences and criticism) should boycott Denmark for asking for pardon! lol, just kidding, it would be so unWestern of our part to do it.
Yeah, I have to agree – you’re missing the point of the protests.
Islam (or at least, strict hyper-fundemental Islam) prohibits images of Mohammed. In fact technically it prohibits images of any animal or person.. but Mohammed is a special case.
The original cartoon was tasteless, and was designed to offend I think. Theres no other reason really. However I support their right to be able to do that.
Really this issue shows the division between strict Islamic law and what we would call “the rights of a democracy”. It’s not going to change…. tricky.
I am sure I heard a report on my favourite news channel this morning that a French news person got sacked for publishing one of the cartoons.
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.
Kipling
One Fench editor (obviously not the one fired) said that these cartoons shoudl be run because there is no reason that anyone should submit to the wishes of Muslim bigots. Why should Muslims tell non-Muslims what to do? Tough toenails about the “image.” It’s a cartoon for gods sake — A CARTOON!!!
Hello I’m danish, please don’t kill me.
What the muslims of the world should be protesting over is that Denmark has not been taking much less muslim refugees since an extreem right wing party has become part of the parliament majority since 2002.
It’s like a totally racist party which only has as their agenda to get all the foreigners out of the country, and the current right wing danish prime minister lets them have that as long as they vote for his pro-Bush policy of sending a few thousand soldiers to Irak and cutting taxes on the wealthy..
There are not so many satirical cartoons about Bush killing lots of Irakis for oil in the danish right wing JP newspaper who published these cartoons, cause for them it’s not proper to tell the truth, so they censor themselves.
Denmark should say sorry not because of the cartoons, but because of their very evil immigration policy and very bad effort at integration of foreigners.
For a religion that constantly proclaims its tolerance and peaceful nature, why is it that it is always threathening to kill people that are abiding by their own principles of free speech and critical thought?
And, if this is offensive to them, why do they they live in our societies? After all, there are Sharia law states in the middle east, but last time I checked people were leaving, not emigrating there.
Personally, I am increasing my purchases of Scandanavia goods …
We are generally an agnostic lot in Australia. Do you think similar cartoons depicting Jesus would recieve a hostile response from American Christians?
At what point do cultural sacred cows become untouchable? Can muslims, or any other religious group say that their beliefs are so special that they are above review? No. But then the internet and cabletv networks have meant that this type of previously strereotyped based humour which used to go unoticed outside of the originating country has now become global. People like to get all angry about their cultural traditions being attacked, and it makes a great symbol for people to unite behind (or offer distraction from normal life). Look at the “Liberals Hate Christmas” stories that circulate in the West EVERY year. They hardly have any basis in fact, but are always trotted out to make people deliciously outraged. I guess this danish cartoon has the same role for muslims, except they appear to get more violently outraged:(
The danes have the right to publish whatever they want and the muslims have the right to object, protest and boycott whatever they want. I don’t see anything wrong with either as long as it doesn’t get bloody.
As a dane I obviously follow this case closely, here is a link to an english language blog for those interested in following the case:
http://www.michellemalkin.com/
Sadly, given our current administration and the religious nuts that are in bed with it, I am pretty sure that similar depictions of Jesus would get a similar reaction!
Mike T
It’s amazing they (the Muslims) get so riled up over these cartoons but when an Islamic terrorist kills someone or several people with a bomb strapped to themselves the press in the Middle East and the people there applaud it, reward it, and call them matyrs. Aljazeera calls them martyrs. Aljazeera say this on their website:
“Our team of dedicated journalists with their multi-national education and diversified backgrounds share a common set of attributes: objectivity, accuracy, and a passion for truth.” I don’t know about you but that is the biggest bunch of bull. At least the Western press will criticize their own governments and policies but they don’t dare to.
And they call these “suicide bombers” martyrs? Their news has nothing negative about themselves only of the west. Just read their website.
Showing how stupid they are, the Danish published these in September 2005 and its only when it hit the French papers which some Arabs read somebody noticed. Great journalism Aljazeera and all of the rest of the Islamic press.
Maybe the Europeans and Americans will realize they don’t care if you are left or right, the fact is you are Christian, Jewis, Agnostic, or anything other than Muslim. With that they don’t like you, they laugh at how you pander to them, and they will do everything to exterminate you. It’s amazing we respect their religion over here but they don’t respect ours over there.
I want to see a cartoon of mr “the prophet” muhammad driving a car with an IED in it that runs into and blows up a hindu sacred cow carrying bhudda while “Jebus on the Cross” looks on.
oh, and the flying spagetti monster should be showering meatballs and spagetti sauce down on the crowd of religious icons…
That’s be teh funny!!!!
If they get this worked up over a silly cartoon then Islam as a culture has a LOT of growing up to do. In this country the public has seen “art” depicting a crucified Christ with breasts, Christ rendered in human feces, pictures of Christ that have been urinated on etc. Yes, this has offended many people in this country and some have gotten very upset. However I haven’t seen scores of masked Christian gunman storming art galleries or setting fire to stores or kidnapping people over tasteless art. I have no problem with people applying economic sanctions to be heard. People have the right to support or withdraw support with their money. And money has been (as ruled by the USA courts) deemed as an expression of free speech.
The thing that we Westerners need to be thinking about is, if the Muslims get this fired up over newspaper cartoons that many have not read (most I’d wager haven’t seen the cartoon and are just reacting by word of mouth), then we need to realize that it any action by any nation can be a convienant excuse to react with any violence against us. In other words we are trying to negotiate with people who are in fact, unreasonable.
The thing that I find most ironic is that CNN and the BBC which are the supposed guardians of a free press don’t have the stones to print the actual cartoons that have raised the ire of many muslims. Or as CNN claims out of a respect for Islam they choose not to show the cartoon. Funny though, because they sure didn’t have that restraint when it came to showing pictures of the artist who urinated on pictures of Christ.
FYI: I’m not a Christian, just one who hates hypocrisy đ
This strikes me as a clear case of “culture clash.”
In free-speech cultures, we blame the individual (or institutional) speaker.
In limited-speech-cultures, the blame for bad speech gets placed on the government since it is the government’s responsibility to censor bad speech beforehand or punish it afterwards.
If’s a very different way of looking at who is responsible for offensive speech.
I think that is why these things tend to become big international/diplomatic blow-ups when speech offends Muslims.
The Muslims just assume that the western governments are collusional in the defamation of Islam since they sit back and do nothing.
Timeline, background info, and controversy over at Wikipedia about the very page that explains the controversy. Itâs a recursive controversy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons
(Click on the âdiscussionâ tab at the top for debate about where and how to display the images central to the controversy.)
Yes, though I don’t think anybody would be threatening bombs, except for maybe Pat Robertson and his ilk. Which just shows that fundamentalists are similarly crazy regardless of their religion.
Generally agnostic in Australia, you say? You wouldn’t happen to have a room for rent or anything would you?
I read the were chanting “death to France” Some thanks they get for opposing the Iraq war, basing Islam’s great devil (the U.S.) and being one of Saddam’s best trading buddy. Just goes to show you these people are nuts and will kill anyone over their silly religion.
Dvorak, you make a lot of assumptions in your article.
I know of a few well-known right-wing Christians and thousands or even millions of their followers in the US that would be well offended if similar cartoons depicting Jesus were published by the main-stream press. Your comments on Western culture don’t stand up.
Why should the people in the photograph be ashamed of themselves? Did you speak with them? Be careful how you write – I don’t believe you have any good reason to suspect the people in the photograph of making bomb threats?
Unfortunately this has nothing to do with “free speech” or “freedom of the press” – which I both advocate. It has more to do with politics and selling newspapers. I’m all for selling more newspapers but when there are political influences and pandering then it can hardly be called “free speech”, can it?
Several people have used Jesus as a parallel in the US but, perhaps, flag burning is a closer analogy.
Think of the Americans who support the flag-burning amendment (not me, BTW).
Those people will claim to believe in free speech but they believe the flag is so sacred that it is above free speech.
Who do they blame for flag burning? Just the flag burners?
No! They also blame the US government, (judicial branch) for not outlawing the practice. Often, they seem more angry at the “liberal” judges than the actual flag burners.
I think anti-flag-burning Americans have a similar mind-set to these Muslims who are blaming the Danish government for not outlawing these cartoons.
I don’t agree and you may not agree but I wouldn’t call them ridiculous.
Its interesting how people jump to condem without knowing the facts. Look at message nr. 6 here, “The original cartoon was tasteless, and was designed to offend I think. Theres no other reason really.”
No it wasn’t. There wasn’t one cartoon there was 12, and why? A Danish author was writing a book about the prophet Mohammed, and wanted to have some illustrations in it. So he tried to contact someone to make some drawings. They refused. Why? They were afraid of what Muslims might do to them. The author then asked another cartoonist who also didn’t want to do it for fear of reprisals. When a third illustrator refused, the author wrote a letter to a newspaper asking if this was really what the world was coming to. Then the Danish newspaper in question (Jyllands Posten) thought this couldn’t be true and asked 40 cartoonists if they wanted to draw a picture of the prophet. They were free to draw anything they liked, the paper didn’t dictate anything. Of those 40 only 12 agreed, the rest didn’t want to (we don’t know if they were also afraid or if the reasons were something else). Since satire has always been popular in Denmark the cartoons were mostly in that style. Of course the newspaper then unfortunately got confirmation: Freedom of expression is under threat in the western world.
I think the point is that the newspaper published the cartoons intending them to be a provocation. And there are a strong anti-muslim current both among right-wing parties and parts of the population which I suspect the newspaper was catering to.
Radical Muslims act like members of a huge sect. It’s like the guys from Wacko, only instead of just a bunch of looneys, you’ve got an entire society filled with those bast****. Heck, entire countries are ruled by them, like Afghanistan was and Iran has been for the last decades.
From what I know Islamism is a religion like any other… only it happens that in this case the number of people with a distorted interpretation of it are simply overwhelming. What I don’t get is this: Why in the world do we have them running free in our continent, Europe? I am an anti-fascist and a freedom lover. I hate any form of censorship and any type of civil liberties throttling. However, I am an European and I am entitled to those rights in my continent. It doesn’t mean anybody else from outside should be. Mainly it doesn’t mean they should be able to simply come here and destabilize our society. They should not have that right.
Who ever means trouble should simply be kicked out. I couldn’t care any less for them as long as they leave us alone.
27 “I think the point is that the newspaper published the cartoons intending them to be a provocation”
No, that is not the point – that is your prejudice because you are trying to stir up trouble.
They shouldn’t have published pictures like that.
In Islam we’re not even allowed to draw pictures of the Prophet peace be upon him.
We dont draw pictures of Jesus or Moses, we respect all the prophets.
We love our prophet peace be upon him.
In Western countries, there is zero tolerance for any display of Nazi memorabilia, praise for Hitler, denial of the Jewish holocaust, etc. Recently, a guy who calls himself as a “historical revisionist” was jailed in Europe because he expressed doubts about the Holocaust.
The U.S. and its allies have troops in almost every Muslim country in the Middle East. There is a long history of American involvement in the region, which has created a hatred for Westerners. So long you are there, they are gonna spit on you. You have no reason to complain. The recent controversy is how their anger gets expression. Withdraw your troops and let Arabs go about their way.
Why does the U.S. need to have troops in 130 countries? Is that how you defend freedom?