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February 3, 2006

Muslim Cartoons: The Dishonesty Of Denmark's Muslim Leadership

There is a whole raft of articles about the current brouhaha over the 12 cartoons initially commissioned and printed by Jyllands Posten, the right-wing Danish newspaper. But these will be discussed in full later today.

What is far more important is the news covered by the Counterterrorism blog and also in the print edition of today's UK Telegraph (page 20) but not in its online edition.

The Telegraph's David Rennie states:

The cartoons row grew yesterday with sharp questions asked about a group of Danish imams who toured the Middle East denouncing their own country for allowing images of the prophet Mohammed to be published.

The group created a 43-page dossier on what they said was rampant racism and Islamophobia in Denmark and took it to politicians and leading clerics in Egypt and Lebanon in a series of trips late last year.

The Danish media have tried to question the Muslim delegates on how they came to include three extra, obscene cartoons in the dossier, in addition to the 12 images that started the row when they were published by a Danish newspaper in September.

The extra cartoons, whose origins remain obscure, show Mohammed with a pig's snout, a dog raping a praying Muslim and Mohammed as a "paedophile demon"

If the 11 countries which initially reacted with horror and demanded apologies for the cartoons were shown images never published in the Danish paper, then we have here evidence of an anti-Western plot, and the Danish authorities should work now to expel these clerics from their country. If a Dane becomes killed as a result of disinformation spread by the clerics, then they should be tried for treason.

The man behind all this is Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, (pictured above), described by the Washington Post as a "prominent Muslim". We reported earlier this month on how Abu Laban was posthumously condemning murdered film-maker Theo van Gogh for producing his film "Submission". Laban, a 60 year old Palestinian, was then condemning freedom of speech, saying that it should be limited when it came to issues of Islam and nudity.

The images were shown to Egypt's Grand Mufti. Lorenzo Vidino of the Counter-terrorism Blog states that Laban's delegation visited Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sunni Islam's most influential scholar, Yusuf al Qaradawi.

Interestingly, Qaradawi is now calling for a day of anger over the cartoons, according to the online Telegraph. If he was shown obscene pictures, perhaps Sheikh Qaradawi is acting under a false impression of just HOW Islam was insulted.

The Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet has been behind the investigations, and discovered the 43-page dossier. It appears that lives are going to be lost over this issue, compounding the seriousness of Abu Laban's dishonesty. As Lorenzo Vidino says:

In any case, the action was a deliberate malicious and irresponsible deed carried out by a notorious Islamist who in another situation had said that "mockery against Mohamed deserves death penalty." And in a quintessential exercise in taqiya, Abu Laban has praised the boycott of Danish goods on al Jazeera, while condemning it on Danish TV.

The Telegraph reports that Ahmed Akkari, one of Laban's delegates, has said that the three extra cartoons were sent to Danish Muslims, and in the dossier were separated by several photocopied letters to Danish ministers and officials. When Kaare Quist of Ekstra Bladet tried to ask the Muslim group if it could talk to the three supposed recipients of the "extra" cartoons, he was refused.

Mr Akkari denied that Muslims were unable to accept any portrayals of the prophet Mohammed without reacting in outrage. There were reference books in libraries in Denmark carrying ancient Persian images of the Prophet that caused no offence but the satrical nature of the newspaper cartons was deeply offensive, he added.

But apart from the image of a bomb/turban, there are no really nasty images of Mohammed in the collection of cartoons, which we have reproduced here. The following image is totally harmless, for example:

However, should you wish to see the three added images which probably set if not, the world, but the Danish Embassy in Syria on fire, they can be found, with others in an anthology of images of Mohammed, by Zombietime, here.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 3, 2006 7:37 AM

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