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January 12, 2006

Norway: Joining Denmark In Reproducing Those Muslim Cartoons

I would have thought that the Muslim communities would by now have moved on to other things. The controversy which involved Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen who was expected to punish the staff at Jyllands-Posten for the pictures had appeared to be over. An attempt to take the issue to a Danish court was thrown out.

However, it appears that the issue of the Jylland-Postens cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, which were published back on September 30, and led to death threats against the newspaper's staff, is being dragged up in the Islamic press.

Khilafah.com says the cartoon issue has made Denmark an "unlikely front in the Islam-West Culture War". It makes the ludicrous claims that "The publication of the cartoons in late September has provoked a fierce national debate over whether Denmark's famously liberal laws on free speech have gone too far."

The only people thinking laws on freedom of speech have gone too far are ungrateful Muslims who live in the West but want our societies to be based on Saudi Arabia or Iran. Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban, who recently attacked the dead filmmaker murdered by Islamist Mohamed Bouyeri in Holland, has said of the cartoons: "We are being mentally tortured," He said it was a right-wing plot to "portray us as against Danish values". Laban is bending the truth here - the Danish Muslims themselves have shown that they are against freedom of speech.

Al Jazeera yesterday said a group of 16 Muslim organisations has jointly condemned the images in a statement issued on Wednesday. "The newspaper has with its action deliberately stepped on Islam's ethical and moral values with the purpose of contempt and ridiculing Muslims' feelings, their holy sites and their religious symbols," read the statement.

Now the conflict stirred up by the Muslim pressure groups has caused Norway to join the fray. The editor of weekly Magazinet, which specialises in Christian issues, has published the entire set of 12 cartoons, which it called "Faces of Mohammed", and has unleashed a controversy, according to Zaman.com.

The editor of Magazinet, Vebjorn Solbekk, has said that his paper does not intend to insult Muslims, but is trying to highlight a "secret erosion" in freedom of expression which has continued for a while.

One of the first critics of the cartoon's reprinting was Norway's Church Assistance Organisation, who issued a press statement. This said freedom of expression is important, but said the publication was knowingly and wilfully causing Muslims hurt.

Klassekampen's editor, Bjorgulv Braanen, condemned the reprinting as childish and unnecessary, and said journalists did not have any duty to contribute to the war of religions.

On the issue of the original Danish publication of the pictures, today's Las Vegas Review Journal publishes an editorial which pulls no punches. It begins:

Islamic fundamentalists have an arrogance that matches their intolerance for Western values. How else can one explain their efforts to limit free expression in countries that have graciously allowed Muslim immigrants the freedom to follow even the most radical movements within their faith?

The editorial states that Muslims and Western liberals always talk of needing a "bridge of understanding" between the Muslim and Western worlds, and points out that the same culture of "freedom of expression" which produces the cartoons which so many Muslims hate, also protects Muslims' right to protest about the issue.

Is the Islamic world ready to meet the West in the middle? Unfortunately, Muslims barely have one foot on that bridge. Egypt demonstrated as much when it issued a statement that said its government "respects freedom of opinion and expression" -- as long as those opinions and expressions don't offend Muslims.

The Danes deserve the Western world's thanks for defending free speech. We can best show our gratitude by following their example.

Muslims who live in the West must decide to accept the cultures of the West, or forever live on the margins of western societies. If Muslims cannot live with the freedom that we in the West have spent hundreds of years trying to achieve, there are 57 Muslim countries in the world, where Islam is the predominant force, where they may feel happier living. Otherwise, they should wake up and smell the coffee and adapt to the customs going on around them in the West, and learn tolerance. The West is the West. It is not, and nor shall it ever be, a satellite colony of Mecca.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 12, 2006 7:01 AM

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