Showing posts with label Muhammad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muhammad. Show all posts

Monday, April 6, 2009

Mohammed Cartoons redux



The above phrase in Arabic is “lan astaslem.”
It means “I will not surrender/I will not submit.”



These are the cartoons that got the Muslum world in a big uproar.

There is a reason we call Muslim mau-mau-ers the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. Three years after the Mohammed Cartoon conflagration, the grievance-mongers are still trying to extract contrition out of the Danes and others who stood up for the West and for free speech.

Unfortunately, the ROPO bullies squeezed conciliatory remarks from Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry,” but he might as well have tattooed it on his forehead:

New NATO chief pledges conciliation with Muslims

Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday he would pay close attention to religious sensibilities in his new role as NATO chief in comments aimed at allaying Muslim concerns at his appointment.

Turkey had threatened to veto Rasmussen’s appointment over his handling of a 2006 crisis triggered by cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper. His comments fell short of the outright apology which Turkish officials had hoped for.

“I respect Islam as one of the world’s major religions as well as its religious symbols,” Rasmussen said during a panel discussion at an Istanbul conference aimed at building bridges between the Muslim world and the West…

…”I was deeply distressed that the cartoons were seen by many Muslims as an attempt by Denmark to mark and insult or behave disrespectively toward Islam or the Prophet Mohammad. Nothing could be further from my mind,” Rasmussen said…

…”During my tenure as the secretary general of NATO I will pay close attention to the religious and cultural sensibilities of the different communities that populate our increasingly pluralistic and globalized world,” Rasmussen said.

How about telling the thugs to start paying attention to the sensibilities of civilized people who don’t wage riots, murder people, and issue death threats over cartoons?

How about a reminder of the cultural insensitivities of the Mo mob to tolerance and free speech?
Click to read the article and comments

Danish cartoonist remains defiant

This is one of the cartoons.

The row over publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper resurfaced this week as Turkey held up the appointment of Danish prime minister as the new Nato secretary general. But as the BBC's Malcolm Brabant reports from Denmark, the impact of that 2006 controversy has never gone away for those closely involved.
Dusk was falling, the curtains were open and the house was hyggelig - a Danish word that means cosy, welcoming and enticing - with scores of candles flickering around the open-plan sitting room.
Dressed in his favourite "anarchist" colours of red and black, Kurt Westergaard sat down to a nourishing Nordic repast of black bread, plaice and prawns.
Unwinding after a day at the coalface of his profession, the bohemian grandfather with a seadog's beard and Father Christmas trousers appeared to be the epitome of Scandinavian tranquillity.
Except relaxing completely is something that this cartoonist can never afford to do.

Islamic extremists placed a $1m price on his head after he dared to mock Muslim suicide bombers by depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

For three years he was forced underground to avoid would-be assassins.
But Mr Westergaard has decided that he will hide no more.

"I am 73 years old," he says.

"Most of my life is over. I am too old to be afraid. I have complete faith in PET [the Danish Secret Service]."

Not only has he emerged from hiding but he has also gone on the offensive, contributing to a recently published Danish book. His latest cartoons are not as provocative as the Muhammad bomb but they satirise Islam and politicians who appease the mullahs.

"It is the question of freedom of speech, freedom of expression," he says.

"I think we are in a period in which this democratic value is under pressure, so it has to be defended."

Political repercussions

The re-emergence of Mr Westergaard has the potential to reinvigorate the argument over what is more important - respect for religion or absolute freedom of expression.
The furore over the cartoons, which reached a zenith three years ago with Danish embassies being burned and Danish products boycotted in Muslim countries, has subsided.

The debate has simply lain dormant and has never been resolved.

But the cartoons issue dominated last week's Nato heads of government meeting, attended by US President Barack Obama.

Turkey threatened to veto the appointment of Denmark's Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as Nato secretary general because he had refused to apologise for the cartoons.

The charm and intervention of President Obama was required to persuade Turkey to back down. [I think I just threw-up in my mouth]

As the alliance's new chief executive, one of Mr Fogh Rasmussen's prime tasks will be to try to heal the wounds between the West and the Muslim world.
Turkish newspapers say one of the key concessions obtained by President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is that Mr Fogh Rasmussen will be forced to apologise for the cartoons crisis.
According to the Danish press, one of his first acts of conciliation will be to publicly acknowledge that the 12 cartoons could have caused offence to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.

The U-turn is certain to upset a large percentage of the Danish population.

It is not widely appreciated that the explosion of worldwide Muslim anger in 2006 followed a visit to the Middle East by a delegation of Danish imams.
In a 2006 BBC Radio Four documentary called Denmark In the Eye of the Cartoon Storm, one of the imams, Ahmed Akkari, admitted to me that the delegation had carried three extra images that were even more inflammatory than the bomb in the turban.

"We took them to show that Muslims were being provoked," said Mr Akkari.

These extra pictures had apparently been produced by right-wing extremists and not by Jyllands Posten. They included drawings of Muhammad with a pig's head and the Prophet as a paedophile.

Following the imams' intervention, the lives of the 12 cartoonists changed irrevocably and they paid the same price as author Salman Rushdie.

Only Mr Westergaard has come out of hiding. The 11 others have followed Danish secret service advice and either have round-the-clock protection or maintain low profiles. One of them is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Still wary
Mr Westergaard's critics accuse him of being a right-wing "islamophobe" and of using the cartoons to bully Denmark's 250,000-strong Muslim minority.
Tim Jensen, a professor of comparative religion at the University of Southern Denmark, said: "I think it is simply pathetic.
"I don't think there is any need for that [new cartoons] right now. I think Muslims have to develop a thicker skin.
"But as long as they have not, let us deal with this in as a civilised manner as possible, let's have our dialogues."

Abdul Wahid Pedersen, a Dane who converted to Islam and now sits on the country's Muslim council, denies that his religion is trying to exert a veto on a fundamental Western freedom.
"If I insult you, I don't have the freedom of speech as my protector any longer," he says.

"It is a matter of finding this balance and we have got to find it, not only in Denmark but in the rest of Europe. If we want to keep our dialogue on the level of insult then we are bound to go down a real dirty track."

Mr Westergaard denies that he bears any hostility towards Muslims.

"But of course I have an anger against those who want to kill me," he adds.

Although special security measures have been installed at his hyggelig home, he closes the curtains, just in case an assassin is lurking.

The great irony is that the new Nato secretary general is about to effectively apologise to the Islamic world for Mr Westergaard's drawing while he, as Danish prime minister, was part of the Bush-Blair alliance which alienated Muslims by invading Iraq.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

NATO selects Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Secretary General

NATO praises Obama, but pledges FEW Afghan troops.

It was not immediately clear how the selection of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Secretary General would affect the war effort.

Rasmussen upset many Muslims when he refused to apologize for the 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad - including one of which showed the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb (shown here)

Apr 4, 2009
from Breitbart.com
By SLOBODAN LEKIC
Associated Press Writer

STRASBOURG, France (AP) - European leaders enthusiastically praised President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy at a NATO summit Saturday but held their ground on a central disagreement and offered only military trainers and extra security forces for upcoming elections.

Violent anti-war protests that marred the alliance's 60th anniversary celebrations were a stark reminder that much of Europe has no appetite for the other, costlier half of Obama's Afghan equation: more combat troops.

"I am pleased that our NATO allies pledged their strong and unanimous support for our new strategy," Obama said. "We'll need more resources and a sustained effort to achieve our ultimate goals."

As protesters battled police outside, NATO risked angering Muslims around the world by giving the post of secretary-general to the prime minister of Denmark, who fueled anger three years ago by backing a Danish newspaper's right to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The 28 leaders at the summit also approved measures to repair ties with Russia—virtually frozen since the Russo-Georgian war in August.

Afghanistan is seen as a crucial test of the power and relevance of the alliance, which was founded at the height of the Cold War to counterbalance the Soviet Union and now is struggling against a rising insurgency far beyond its borders.

The escalating war has highlighted doubts in Europe about the ability of NATO's 58,000 troops to stem the Taliban insurgency. Worries about casualties and costs have contributed to opposition to a conflict many Europeans see as an unnecessary distraction during economic crisis.

Despite a security crackdown on both sides of the Franco-German border, thousands of anti-war protesters fought running street battles with police, setting ablaze a hotel and a customs post and forcing the leaders' spouses to cancel a visit to a nearby cancer hospital.

During the summit, jointly co-hosted by France and Germany as a symbol of European unity, Obama briefed NATO leaders about his new strategy aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan while rooting out Taliban and al-Qaida hard-liners in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

After the meeting, Obama heralded what he called "concrete commitments" from NATO allies on Afghanistan, saying their agreement to send up to 5,000 more trainers and police was "a strong down payment" toward securing the country.

Obama's new strategy has him adding 21,000 U.S. troops to an American force of 38,000.
The White House said NATO countries agreed to send 3,000 personnel on short-term deployments, to help stabilize Afghanistan before elections in August. An additional 1,400 to 2,000 will provide training for Afghanistan's national army.

NATO's outgoing Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance would set up a trust fund for the Afghan National Army, and provide monitoring and liaison teams that would work with Afghanistan's fledgling security forces.

The alliance must ensure "no more terrorist danger emanates from Afghanistan," German Chancellor Angela Merle said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown echoed Obama's argument that Afghanistan was key to Europe's security.

Now we are working to build a successful, democratic Afghanistan and that will be that our streets will be safer in Britain," he said. "With important presidential elections to come in the next few months we must not allow the Taliban to disrupt the democratic process."

It was not immediately clear how the selection of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen would effect the war effort. Fogh Rasmussen's candidacy for NATO's top civilian post was initially opposed by Turkey, whose leaders pointed out that the choice would antagonize predominantly Muslim Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Fogh Rasmussen appeared arrogant to many Muslims, when he refused to apologize for the 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad—including one of which showed the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb—that sparked angry protests in 2006 throughout the Middle East and South Asia.

NATO said it had agreed to address various Turkish "concerns." Turkey said its requests had included the closure of a Kurdish satellite television broadcaster based in Denmark; the establishment of contacts between NATO and Islamic countries; appointment of a Turk as an aide to Fogh Rasmussen, and senior NATO command positions for Turkish generals.

Fogh Rasmussen denied making undue concessions to the Turks, and pledged to improve relations between NATO and the Muslim world.

"I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world and do my utmost to ensure a positive cooperation and intensified dialogue with Muslim countries," he told a news conference after the summit.

Click to read the rest of the article