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October 4, 2006
Norway: Muslim Cartoon Jihad Brewing
On Monday October 2, we reported that a Norwegian television station, TV2, was going to show the infamous Danish cartoons of Mohammed, which caused murder and mayhem in February this year, four months after their original publication in Jyllands-Posten.
Our news came from The Observer at News from Norway, who said that later that evening they would feature in a documentary by Per Christian Magnus. The Norwegian version of Aftenposten stated that the Norwegian Foreign Office had warned all of its embassies in Muslim countries about the broadcast.
The Observer reported the following day that the cartoons had, indeed, been shown. He wrote: "Will the muslims go ballistic like they did last time? I think we'll get a reaction that's identical to the one we saw last winter, a full scale confrontation between the muslim and the western civilization."
Today, he confirms that the first signs of rage have begun to build up, after several Arab channels had discovered that the images had been displayed in Per Christian Magnus' documentary: "Document 2". Little Green Footballs has picked up on his story, and it seems that a rerun of the former fuss will ensue.
Somehow, the climate is different now. Since the issues of the Pope's Regensburg speech, the persecutions of French philosopher Robert Redeker, and the fuss over the Berlin opera house's production of Idomeneo, the world has grown more aware that the cartoon reactions were based less on a cultural faux-pas on the part of the West, but a deliberate stretegy by Islamic radicals to provoke a conflict.
It has been recently borne out by history that Islam is not offended so much by images of their "prophet" than by anything which contradicts their fascistic ideology. Merely quoting in public a statement by a 14th century Byzantine emperor can cause Christians to be killed.
Vebjørn K. Selbekk is the editor of Norwegian weekly journal Magazinet. In January he published the cartoons, before the furor had really developed in the Muslim world. This furor had been created as a result of the tireless campaigning in the Middle East by Palestinian-born Copenhagen imam, Abu Laban, and his vicious little sidekick Ahmed Akkiri.
We reported on February 10 that Selbekk had apologized, following the lead from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.
The Observer states that according to Nettavisen, Vebjørn K. Selbekk did not apologize out any sense of contrition, but because of "death threats and strong pressure from the Norwegian government to do so".
The current absolute intolerance on the part of some in the Muslim world of any questioning of their faith, first highlighted by the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, is the antithesis of everything the West upholds - most importantly freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Many in the West, including the US mainstream media, flatly refused to reproduce the cartoons.
Hopefully, if the Muslim world decides this time to make an issue over the cartoons, then all major mainstream media news sources will reproduce the offending pictures, and properly allow the news-watching public to fully understand what the fuss is all about. Failure to do so is not only cowardly and spineless - it is bad journalism.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 4, 2006 2:07 PM
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