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February 8, 2006
Denmark: Muslim Imams Are "Not To Be Trusted"
We reported earlier that the Danish Muslim cleric, Palestinian-born Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, the chairman of the Islamic Belief Society, had toured the Middle East at the end of 2005 and in January. There he drummed up support for a Muslim backlash against Denmark. He not only showed 12 cartoons which appeared in September in the Danish best-selling paper Jyllands Posten, but also included three highly offensive images in his 43-page dossier, which was presented to the Mufti of Egypt and other Muslim leaders.
His act of treachery toward the nation which has given him residency has now created its own backlash. As someone claiming to be the most senior Muslim cleric in Denmark, Abu Laban's appalling behaviour has now caused the Danish government to rule out Muslim clerics from negotiations on Muslim integration, states the Times.
The seriousness and the malice of Abu Laban's mission has been noted, and today, the Integration Minister, Rikke Hvilshoj, said in parliament: "I think we have a clear picture today that it’s not the imams we should be placing our trust in if we want integration in Denmark to work."
The Danish government has decided that since the eruption of worldwide Muslim hostility (based on a mis-representation of the truth), it is important to include ethnic minorities in the culture, and to create policies encouraging integration.
There are 180,000 Muslims from a total population of 5.4 million in the kingdom. The Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has said that the imams who toured the Middle East used "double speak" - telling Muslim nations to boycott Danish goods and telling the Danes that they opposed such a boycott.
"Some people are speaking with two tongues. The Government watches the news circulated in Arabic countries very carefully so we can catch these false stories and correct them immediately," Rasmussen stated.
And as the nations whose newspapers which have published the cartoons of Mohammed now number more than 30, Jyllands Posten has thrown down the gauntlet to a press organ of the Iranian regime, which has accused the Danish government of "double standards".
Iranian paper Hamshahri has announced a competition for readers to submit cartoons about the Holocaust. Jyllands Posten has said that it will publish the Iranian cartoons when they appear. The paper had claimed the West had double standards, running down Islam while not wishing to be seen as anti-semitic.
Flemming Rose, the cultural editor who initially commissioned the illustrations of Mohammed, said "My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper, and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them."
In other news, the cartoons of Mohammed have now been admitted as a "motivating factor" by the 16 year old Muslim youth who shot dead an Italian Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, in the eastern town of Trabzon, Turkey. In a second day of interrogation, he has claimed the act was done to avenge the publication of the cartoons.
In Gaza, observers from Europe were forced to leave Hebron after an attack upon their offices.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 8, 2006 7:21 PM
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