Uh, well, thanks for clarifying otherwise unfounded suspicions.
Here we go again - Muslims are "offended". Other than causing death, mayhem and destruction, when are they not "offended"?
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March 20, 2008, 9:39 amAfter Danish Cartoons, Dutch Film Sparks More Worries
By MIKE NIZZA
The aftermath has flowed predictably enough since Feb. 13, when Danish newspapers reprinted cartoons that sparked fury among Muslims around the world in 2006: There was more fury.
Street protests started in the streets of Copenhagen and spread to Sudan, Pakistan, Turkey and other parts of the Islamic world. Now, after more than a month, comes what might be the direst reaction in Osama bin Laden’s latest message.
“Publishing these insulting drawings,” he said, “is the greatest misfortune and the most dangerous.”An analyst interviewed by The Associated Press interpreted the message as a “clear threat against E.U. member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack.”
In The New York Times today, Michael Kimmelman writes that “many Europeans seem fed up,” including some of the cartoonists. One has been moving from safe house to safe house to elude any assassins, while another is struggling to find meaning in the second printing:“At the time, in 2006, there were good journalistic reasons for other newspapers to publish the cartoons because few people had seen them then, so they were news,” he said. “Now the journalistic justification is almost nonexistent because everyone knows what they look like, so it’s more about solidarity than about news.”
Meanwhile, a politician two countries away is planning to release a movie that has “triggered a panic in the Netherlands that could only be likened to the dread leading up to a massive storm,” according to Der Spiegel, a German magazine.
Geert Wilders’s 15-minute film reportedly juxtaposes excerpts from the Koran with beheadings and stonings on a split screen, a warning of “the threat of the growing Islamization of Western society,” he said in an interview with a Danish TV station, Reuters reported.
Even before the film’s release, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands insisted that his country did not share the views of Mr. Wilders, who is the subject of death threats — threats made all the more unsettling by the 2004 murder of another Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who was killed for being “an enemy of Islam,” the killer said.“I strongly condemn Geert Wilders’s condescending statements about Muslims,”
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark said on Wednesday, according to Reuters. “I find these expressions extremely offensive.” But the show seems likely to go on, even after every television station in the country decided against airing it. After all, Mr. Wilders still has YouTube to turn to.
With Mr. Wilders planning vaguely to release the video by the end of the month, Dutch security officials are left hoping that he will at least offer them a warning beforehand, so that they can prepare for another round of backlash.
[ Thanks to several commenters for quickly pointing out an editing error that had Mr. Rasmussen leading the wrong country in an earlier version of this post. - Ed. ]
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Ah, the serene, peaceful and tolerant religion of Islam. And please, give me some instances, or at least one, where moderate Islam condemns violence in the name of their religion. They refuse to for good reason. They are afraid of the radicals too. Can you blame them?
2 comments:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec05/islam_8-04.html
And please, give me some instances, or at least one, where moderate Islam condemns violence in the name of their religion.
I guess it depends on how you define moderate. That is a term that I wish we would just drop from the vocabulary because it is so often interpreted as "mainstream." Mainstream Islam is quite devout and peaceful. Moderate Islam? I'm not even sure what that is. Does it mean half Islamic and half not? The radical jihadists are not more devout than the majority of peaceful Muslims. The jihadists are the least faithful to the religion that they claim to defend. They are cafeteria Muslims, picking and choosing what parts of the Koran and Hadith that they choose to focus on, twisting the meanings of those parts to fit their blood-thirsty agenda, and then having the audacity to call it "Islam."
If we want to look at mainstream Muslims, I can think of 300,000 examples of mainstream Muslims doing more than condemning the jihadist violence; they are actively fighting against it at great personal risk and great risk to their families. They are the 300,000 members of the Iraqi Army and Police. There are tens of thousands of similar examples in Afghanistan.
As for those who have not taken such a bold stance against the jihadists, I think you're exactly right: "They refuse to for good reason. They are afraid of the radicals too. Can you blame them?"
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