This is a prime example of why we should not be in favor of nuclear research in the Middle East. Look how upset they got over a cartoon. Remember what are parents told me, “stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt us.” While I understand the actions of a few do not properly illustrate an accurate picture of the majority of Muslims, it is time other Muslims speak up against the few. Words from the western cultures are not being heard. Members within the Muslim culture must also speak up and out about human rights. This incident boils down to human rights. There is no right in rioting and causing harm and potential harm to other humans over words and a few pictures. While, I am no expert, I would assume Mohammed would not agree with violent actions over mere words. Freedom of Speech is identical to Freedom of Religion. Until Human Rights are respected in the Middle East, trust, respect, and understanding will never be given.

If the cartoons are blasphemous, why aren't Muslims demonstrating against Osama and Al Qaeda whose activities inspired them? As long as Muslims protect such beasts, the cartoons speak the truth.
Muslims have lost the demonstrations war: No fatwahs, no Christian deaths, just instability in Muslim countries. They will choose suicide instead of incarceration--and they will most definitely be incarcerated for acting out their violent religious convictions. Here in the US, a man honor-killed his daughter at the urging of his "brothers" because she had an American boyfriend and an after-school job at MacDonald's. The old coot is in jail and there hasn't been another case like that since. The man cries that his tenn-aged daughter was trying to kill him--except that she had turned on a tape recorder just before her father attacked and killed her, and what went on proved him to be a liar.
You Muslims are right to be afraid that you will be locked up if you kill somebody--anybody, really, in free secular lands! So, we are making ourselves understood, after all.

Good for us from the West!

my recomendation to you to go and brush you teeth with crest paste and then rinse your mouth with the highest concetration of mouthwash to clean your mouth because your mouth smells as shit and poop,I think some one let you suck his penis after it was in your rectum.you are one of the guys who likes to fucked orally anally . I know your language so don't try to reply because we know your angry words I am so happy to make you angry to the point you smell shit ..
bye bye bussy and sissy boy

we all know now why this wise arabic muslim man left you.
his only mistake was making crazy rotten like u a wife.
eat your pig and try to find another pig to marry.

there's an anti-semitic cartoon on this story (scroll)

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/790

and some material offensive to catholics can be found here

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/287

Thank you for your kind response, Paul. How many Jewish or Christian cartoons has the Brussels Journal (BJ) published since it began? Just curious...

Cheers...

... is the cry regarding the lumping together of all of Islaam by the west as murderers. And it is true that not all Muslims are terrorists, but you never seem to understand why that wrong impression is so prevalent.

I believe its is because the "non-terrorist" majority Muslims never raise their voices in protest of the minority of terrorists. They are never condemed, except very broadly and diplomatically by singular moderate, political muslim leaders.

Where is the indignation at the video beheadings, kidnapping of women, and murder of people who "offend" Muslims, by the non-violent Muslim majority?

Western newspapers, at least in the US, routinely carry cartoons mocking and laughing at everything about Christianity and Christ. I'm sure this offends a great many Christians, especially the fundementalist christain, who is mocked most of all.

Being "offended" doesn't condone or excuse murder and violence in the west. You can make all the Jew/Holocaust cartoons you want, but you arre never going to make us feel your "anger" they way you think.

We don't get offended by sophomoric cartoons. Even when you invent primitive stories - like Jews who kill children for their blood - we just laugh at this. Your overreaction to the cartoon affair is showing your defensiveness, to quote the NY Times.

And your demonstrations in London with signs reading "Europe You Will Pay Your 911 Is On The Way" don't really scare people anymore. You can't intimidate people into silence by demanding and demanding, week after week.

Again, quoting the Times, while we don't share the rage that you want us to feel with your silly Hitler and Holocaust cartoons, we do understand your panic.

Our kind response is that if it is necessary to inform our readers about a news story by showing these cartoons we will not hesitate to do so.

To reps of Brussels Journal:

I'm curious if your online issue is willing to show cartoons of the Holocaust and or Jewish Rabbis. I'm only curious how the Editor/Staff of Brussels Journal would respond. I await your kind response.

Regards...

 I contend that we are all atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

My apologies for missing your earlier comments on the issue. I retract my conclusion that you're a genuine hypocrite if you've already stated that current European laws against the Holocaust should be retracted.

However, revoking those laws is close to impossible under the status quo because anyone who attempts to risks being labeled an "anti-Semite" -- even if it has nothing to do with it. Knowing that such action is unfeasible in today's politically charged climate, what realistic and more probable solution do you propose to resolve this problem in support of free expression? (I hope I didn't miss any earlier comments of yours if you've already stated them!)

Thanks and looking forward to your response.
Peace...

Seems like you're a genuine supporter of free expression. The problem with your position, however, is that you haven't spoken out against laws in some European countries that make it illegal to speak against the Holocaust, such as in France, Germany, and Austria. If you and others in this forum claim to be true advocates of free expression, then you would have been against those European laws curbing free expression. The fact that you don't makes you not a genuine supporter of free expression, but obviously a genuine hypocrite. Please don't take offense. My intended purpose is only to unveil the absurdity of your position. Long live free expression...

"An American Indian's View
Of The Cartoons"

(By Robert Robideau)

10 February, 2006
Counterpunch

Reading the first news reports about the cartoons depicting Muhammid as a terrorist reminded me of the unfriendly media that printed the then Attorney Gerneral of for South Dakota, William Janklows` vigilante order, "The only way to deal with the Indian problem in South Dakota is to put a gun to the AIM leaders' heads and pull the trigger." Such ethnically hostile and abusive reporting by mainstream media was what helped to kill more than 60 American Indians and assault hundreds more during the federal governments reign of terror that occurred between 1973 and 1975 on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota reservation.

The old adage that was popularized in Hollywood westerns," White man speaks with forked tongue" had a special meaning. It denoted the deceit of European settlers who often lied to North American Indian people as they stole coveted lands and nearly decimated them as a people. The recent split tongue approach used in defending Danish racist cartoons as freedom of speech must be loudly condemned as just more attacks on the rights of Muslims to defend their lands, culture and self determination.

Most European and North American newspapers support the editor of, Jyllands-Posten, the first paper to publish the offensively racist cartoons, expressed position, "we cannot apologize for freedom of expression."

The word "but" is a favorite transition of hypocrites who would have us believe on one hand that freedom of speech is a democratic principle to be defended at all cost, while on the other hand are quick to condemn when it attacks and incites hatred toward them and those they wish to protect.

Many "Democratic" European countries have laws against anti-Semitism, which are exclusive; they do not protect other cultures from racial attacks. You can insult the prophet of Islam with offensive cartoon messages that deface his image, to create an atmosphere of hatred for Muslims, but dare not tread on the special rights and protections they have formed laws around to protect anti-Semitism.

For years Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Egyptian Muslim, had exercised his right to free speech at his Finsbury Park mosque in London. The British authorities attempted to revoke his citizenship and for years never brought criminal charges against him. With the new atmosphere created around the global war on terrorism (GWT) an English tribunal recently convicted and sentenced Hamza to seven years in prison for allegedly "directly and deliberately stirring up hatred against Jewish people and encouraging murder of those he referred to as non-believers." Certainly the same could be said of the cartoonist.

Despite the fact that more then 10 people have died as a result of the Danish cartoons there has been no criminal charge laid against the offending papers nor the Danish cartoonist. Some countries say that they are looking for ways to prosecute.The cartoons, which many Danish and Scandinavian newspaper editors defended in the name "radical Islam" predictably, resulted in stirring the anger of the Muslim world, rightly so. In defense, they have taken to the streets in unified protests that will, I hope, send shock waves throughout the European Union for sometime to come.

With all the comparisons that have been made and continue to be made between the struggles of Muslim people and North American Indian people, it did not come as a surprise to find similar cartoons historically used to create racism, hatred and war against American Indians. Portraying the popular sentiment about Indians in the 1800`s. A cartoon by Grant Hamilton, called the, "The Nation's Ward" portrayed the Indian as a savage snake constricting a pioneer family. It shows further the American Indian being fed by Uncle Sam while the pioneers' home burns. This cartoon and others like it protested the U.S. treaty promise of giving out food rations to Indians through hard winters. Political propaganda fed through various printed media has helped to create the mentality that allowed wholesale, systematic and frenetic killings of Indian men, women and children. One example of such an atrocity took place at Sand Creek when Phil Sheridan gave U.S. soldiers permission to butcher women and children and to hang their sexual body parts on public display at the Denver opera house. Such atrocities have occurred in today,s modern wars currently being waged against Muslim people under Bush,s doctrine of ´preemptive strike´ that has killed more civilians then fighters.

More recently, the United States federal government began using the FBI as a national political police force to put down legitimate protest movements of the 1960´s. A program called the counter intelligence program (cointelpro) was developed to assist the FBI. This program used offensive cartoons as a method to fan the flames of racism that had been spoon-fed to the Euro-American public through newspapers, books, cartoons and Hollywood westerns became part of their standard bag of dirty tricks in putting down peaceful protest.

Today, the FBI, with a mad infinity for maintaining the imprisonment of now world famous American Indian activist, Leonard Peltier, not to long ago, used a cartoon posing him as an Indian terrorist killing their fellow agents. This cartoon is still today on their website, despite the fact that even prosecutors who tried the case admit they "do not know who killed the two FBI agents" during the Pine Ridge reign of terror on June 26, 1976. Leonard Peltier has been confined 30 years in federal prisons as a result of FBI manufactured evidence, much of which the federal government has since admitted to.

There is no question that sports teams who use Indian Mascots, cartoons that portray inaccurate images, symbols insulting to American Indians. One professor speaking out against the use of Chief Illiniwek by the U of I football team in the late 1990s, said," "I've often visited Germany and speaking to younger people there, they all feel great pain when they consider the recent past. Not one university in Germany would contemplate having a rabbi as a mascot."

Freedom of speech and of the press has been used as a weapon against oppressed people for centuries. It has been nothing more than a smokescreen to justify the actions of a few but in reality incite religious and ethnic hatred. The editors knew these cartoons were clearly drawn as deadly propaganda tools, created with malice and forethought, to neutralize Muslim groups in struggle and deny them "respectability" in the world community. Who now should be charged for inciting a riot? Who now should be held accountable to the Muslim communities for these slanderous, racist cartoons that has forced communities to take sides against each other? How can we share this world, respecting the diversity of ethnic origins if the powers on hand continue to pump the public with hate filled propaganda! It is time for the media to step up to the plate accepting responsibility for their actions and what better place is there to start than in Denmark!

(ROBERT ROBIDEAU is co-director of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. He can be reached at: [email protected])

"Those Danish Cartoons:
Don't Be Fooled, This Isn't an Issue of Islam versus Secularism"

(by Robert Fisk) February 09, 2006

So now it's cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb-shaped turban. Ambassadors are withdrawn from Denmark, Gulf nations clear their shelves of Danish produce, Gaza gunmen threaten the European Union. In Denmark, Fleming Rose, the "culture" editor of the pip-squeak newspaper which published these silly cartoons--last September, for heaven's sake--announces that we are witnessing a "clash of civilisations" between secular Western democracies and Islamic societies. This does prove, I suppose, that Danish journalists follow in the tradition of Hans Christian Anderson. Oh lordy, lordy. What we're witnessing is the childishness of civilisations.

So let's start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights, almost cariacatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote about the sea's "long, withdrawing roar". That's why we talk about "the West versus Islam" rather than "Christians versus Islam"--because there aren't an awful lot of Christians left in Europe. There is no way we can get round this by setting up all the other world religions and asking why we are not allowed to make fun of Mohamed.

Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I happen to remember how, more than a decade ago, a film called The Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris, someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young man. I also happen to remember a US university which invited me to give a lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled "September 11, 2001: ask who did it but, for God's sake, don't ask why". When I arrived, I found that the university had deleted the phrase "for God's sake" because "we didn't want to offend certain sensibilities". Ah-ha, so we have "sensibilities" too.

In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularists when it comes to free speech--or cheap cartoons--we can worry about adherents to our own precious religion just as much. I also enjoyed the pompous claims of European statesmen that they cannot control free speech or newspapers. This is also nonsense. Had that cartoon of the Prophet shown instead a chief rabbi with a bomb-shaped hat, we would have had "anti-Semitism" screamed into our ears--and rightly so--just as we often hear the Israelis complain about anti-Semitic cartoons in Egyptian newspapers.

Furthermore, in some European nations--France is one, Germany and Austria are among the others--it is forbidden by law to deny acts of genocide. In France, for example, it is illegal to say that the Jewish Holocaust or the Armenian Holocaust did not happen. So it is, in fact, impermissable to make certain statements in European nations. I'm still uncertain whether these laws attain their objectives; however much you may prescribe Holocaust denial, anti-Semites will always try to find a way round. We can hardly exercise our political restraints to prevent Holocaust deniers and then start screaming about secularism when we find that Muslims object to our provocative and insulting image of the Prophet.

For many Muslims, the "Islamic" reaction to this affair is an embarrassment. There is good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some element of reform introduced to their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue, no-one would have minded. But it was clearly intended to be provocative. It was so outrageous that it only caused reaction.

And this is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntingdon garbage about a "clash of civilisations". Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that's what happens when you topple dictators). In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of "Palestine". There's a message here, isn't there? That America's policies--"regime change" in the Middle East--are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes which we imposed on them.

For the Danish cartoon to be dumped on top of this fire is dangerous indeed.

In any event, it's not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Koran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Mohamed as a bin Laden-type image of violence. They portrayed Islam as a violent religion. It is not. Or do we want to make it so?

(Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is The Conquest of the Middle East.)

First of all you say you have researched our religion from what im reading you havent a clue.  We do not worship Muhammed.  We respect him.  Our Religion forbids us to Worship anyone but the One tru god Allah.  Also,  yes Muhammed was Illeterate, doesn't mean he wasn't Intelligent.  He was a brilliant mind.  Him along with the help of Allah won many battles for the Muslims which seemed Impossible.  Also, when (i cant remember his name) came with an Army of Elephants to Destroy the House of Allah.  It wasn't man that stopped the Elephants.  But Allah himself.  He sent thousands of Birds with Giang rocks to destroy the Elephants.  What do you have to say about that.  And how was it that an army of 700,000(Romans) was defeated by an army of about 50,000 Muslims.  It was with the Power of Allah.  Or the Roman were just chickens like all the others who came.  Come and try, even if you tried for the next 100 years you wouldnt be able to demolish the Religion of Islam.  It is that strong.  And about people saying women are being oppressed no they arent.  And they do have the rights to divorce their husbands recieved over 1400 years ago.  Which was only given to them within the past 100 years in the western world.  Your world is not meant to last.  And i am not saying that it will be total Islam domination.  Im saying a Democracy does not last long, as people tend to use it to hurt instead of its purpose to bring people together.  Diddnt you see what happened to Communism, though it still exist. Its purpose was to bring people together.  Not have a friggen dictator trying to claim hes god or sumthing.  Whatever he thinks. 

Allahu-Akbar   -   Allah is the Greatest

_{HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH~ YOURE HILARIOUS!! SAY MORE SAY MORE! WE WANNA HEAR MORE OF YOUR FUNNY STUFF!! DONT STOP THERE! GO ON!~Phhewwww...stomach cramp AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH}

_{Anything else you wanna say about the Islamic faith?}

_{ALL of your insults towards the Islamic faith is absolutely fucking crazy. Just because SOME of them are extremists doesnt make ALL muslims are suicide bombers you retarded racists scums of the earth. And who the hell would draw such stupid cartoons about Mohammed anyway? I dont find that at all amusing cuz it's BLASPHEMY and RUDE and whoever finds humor in those cartoons, you people should read a real comic..or better yet, see a therapist, cuz you angst ridden muslim-hater need it. Cant believe you mentally disturbed buttheads would be so loooowwwww...It's not the Muslims or Christians who are stinking up the whole universe, its you brainless demented retard EXTREMISTS who should be demolish from the surface of this world.If it werent for your ignorant pride, we wouldnt be living in a world of hate and so much prejudice.We need love dude!not war...where is the love????? Listen to Black Eyed Peas people}

Because Islam is a Medieval religion, it faces the agony of adaptation to the modern world. If it cannot adapt, it will self-destruct. That is what we are witnessing now in the violent demonstrations over cartoons,along with suicide bombers and other such extreme reactions to the failures of Islam as it confronts the modern world. The alternative is for Islam to drag the rest of the world back to Medieval mores, which is why Iran wants nuclear weapons.
When Muslims begin questioning Islam's inabilities to adapt to modernity, they will see the truth of its fallacies and abandon their failed religion if it forbids them to adapt. Islam cannot survive as is.
The prophet Mohammed was an illiterate man with manay weaknesses, of which pedophilia was one. Muslims will see him as he really was someday, when they muster their courage to face the truth and to defy their wicked imams.
Until then, they are, like lemmings, running to the edge of the cliff to throw themselves off. It's sad, really, but that's how I see them, as suicidal lemmings due to their living in ignorance and their fight not to submit to the fruits of intelligence.

Where do these muslim leaders come from? If they were truly keepers of the faith they would blow themselves up right? Then they would finally get a chance at one of those 72 blonde virgins. What a fucking joke.

i congratul of your strong and mature person.

imhappy for you to leave that hell.

i applaud you.

bravo.

we need more people like you in europe.

we need to ban islam till they allow other religions in all muslims countries.

that means never,lol

we cant tolerate they coming to practise their religion in europe and we cant practise our in their fucking countries.

im glad you are awake as me,

i hope lepen win in france ,aznar in spain and the bnp in uk and ban that horrible cult from europe.

we need to awake more people ,

good job ,

congratulations.

when crazy bush says that god orderd him to go to iraq .noone in the free world of u critisize him due to using god in his words in the way as benladen whom bush hate most and mock his use of god in his speech.
when ramsfield talk about differance between god of islam and christianty in a foolish ignorant malcicous way.when bush says it is a crusade war.i donot find any of your free media or free press mock or disgust him.
are not there any single wise man among you.
where the cartoons,TV shows and articles and mocking that.
or as ususal double faced with black heart full of hate and that is all.

i didnot mean u when i mentioned hitler ..it was for the one who wishes taht hither woulh have kiled muslims instead of jews..
and whenever i use tough words ,it was only simple transfer and return of some of the ugly words presented here in this site by those european people who claim to be civilized.
an dunder any condition , i cannot accpet any ugly words about our prophet and i say here for anyone who went out his limits in talking that this indicate weakness and who do that only wants to draw the muslism to his level and only intend to provoke.
so for who ever not able of exchanging decent words to stop better.

consider all ugly bad and vulgar words all of you said about islam and muslims said to you now.
my morals of islam prevent me from responding or replying to anyone with these type of talks.

"Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons"

Gwladys Fouché
Monday February 6, 2006

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.
The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

The illustrator said: "I see the cartoons as an innocent joke, of the type that my Christian grandfather would enjoy."

"I showed them to a few pastors and they thought they were funny."

But the Jyllands-Posten editor in question, Mr Kaiser, said that the case was "ridiculous to bring forward now. It has nothing to do with the Muhammad cartoons.

"In the Muhammad drawings case, we asked the illustrators to do it. I did not ask for these cartoons. That's the difference," he said.

"The illustrator thought his cartoons were funny. I did not think so. It would offend some readers, not much but some."

The decision smacks of "double-standards", said Ahmed Akkari, spokesman for the Danish-based European Committee for Prophet Honouring, the umbrella group that represents 27 Muslim organisations that are campaigning for a full apology from Jyllands-Posten.

"How can Jyllands-Posten distinguish the two cases? Surely they must understand," Mr Akkari added.

Meanwhile, the editor of a Malaysian newspaper resigned over the weekend after printing one of the Muhammad cartoons that have unleashed a storm of protest across the Islamic world.

Malaysia's Sunday Tribune, based in the remote state of Sarawak, on Borneo island, ran one of the Danish cartoons on Saturday. It is unclear which one of the 12 drawings was reprinted.

Printed on page 12 of the paper, the cartoon illustrated an article about the lack of impact of the controversy in Malaysia, a country with a majority Muslim population.

The newspaper apologised and expressed "profound regret over the unauthorised publication", in a front page statement on Sunday.

"Our internal inquiry revealed that the editor on duty, who was responsible for the same publication, had done it all alone by himself without authority in compliance with the prescribed procedures as required for such news," the statement said.

The editor, who has not been named, regretted his mistake, apologised and tendered his resignation, according to the statement.

The Sunday Times February 05, 2006

"These cartoons don't defend free speech, they threaten it",
by Simon Jenkins

I think, therefore I am, said the philosopher. Fine. But I think, therefore I speak? No way.

Nobody has an absolute right to freedom. Civilisation is the story of humans sacrificing freedom so as to live together in harmony. We do not need Hobbes to tell us that absolute freedom is for newborn savages. All else is compromise.

Should a right-wing Danish newspaper have carried the derisive images of Muhammad? No. Should other newspapers have repeated them and the BBC teasingly “flashed” them to prove its free-speech virility? No. Should governments apologise for them or ban them from repeating the offence? No, but that is not the issue.

A newspaper is not a monastery, its mind blind to the world and deaf to reaction. Every inch of published print reflects the views of its writers and the judgment of its editors. Every day newspapers decide on the balance of boldness, offence, taste, discretion and recklessness. They must decide who is to be allowed a voice and who not. They are curbed by libel laws, common decency and their own sense of what is acceptable to readers. Speech is free only on a mountain top; all else is editing.

Despite Britons’ robust attitude to religion, no newspaper would let a cartoonist depict Jesus Christ dropping cluster bombs, or lampoon the Holocaust. Pictures of bodies are not carried if they are likely to be seen by family members. Privacy and dignity are respected, even if such restraint is usually unknown to readers. Over every page hovers a censor, even if he is graced with the title of editor.

To imply that some great issue of censorship is raised by the Danish cartoons is nonsense. They were offensive and inflammatory. The best policy would have been to apologise and shut up. For Danish journalists to demand “Europe-wide solidarity” in the cause of free speech and to deride those who are offended as “fundamentalists . . . who have a problem with the entire western world” comes close to racial provocation. We do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence. To be a European should not involve initiation by religious insult.

Many people seem surprised that a multicultural crunch should have come over religion rather than race. Most incoming migrants from the Muslim world are in search of work and security. They have accepted racial discrimination and cultural subordination as the price of admission. Most Europeans, however surreptitiously, regard that subordination as reasonable.

What Muslims did not expect was that admission also required them to tolerate the ridicule of their faith and guilt by association with its wildest and most violent followers in the Middle East. Islam is an ancient and dignified religion. Like Christianity its teaching can be variously interpreted and used for bloodthirsty ends, but in itself Islam has purity and simplicity. Part of that purity lies in its abstraction and part of that abstraction is an aversion to icons.

The Danes must have known that a depiction of Allah as human or the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist would outrage Muslims. It is plain dumb to claim such blasphemy as just a joke concordant with the western way of life. Better claim it as intentionally savage, since that was how it was bound to seem. To adapt Shakespeare, what to a Christian “is but a choleric word”, to a Muslim is flat blasphemy.

Of all the casualties of globalism, religious sensibility is the most hurtful. I once noticed in Baghdad airport an otherwise respectable Iraqi woman go completely hysterical when an American guard set his sniffer dog, an “unclean” animal, on her copy of the Koran. The soldier swore at her: “Oh for Christ’s sake, shut up!” She was baffled that he cited Christ in defence of what he had done.

Likewise, to an American or British soldier, forcibly entering the women’s quarters of an Arab house at night is normal peacekeeping. To an Arab it is abhorrent, way beyond any pale. Nor do Muslims understand the West’s excusing such actions, as does Tony Blair, by comparing them favourably with those of Saddam Hussein, as if Saddam were the benchmark of international behaviour.

It is clearly hard for westerners to comprehend the dismay these gestures cause Muslims. The question is not whether Muslims should or should not “grow up” or respect freedom of speech. It is whether we truly want to share a world in peace with those who have values and religious beliefs different from our own. The demand by foreign journalists that British newspapers compound their offence shows that moral arrogance is as alive in the editing rooms of northern Europe as in the streets of Falluja. That causing religious offence should be regarded a sign of western machismo is obscene.

The traditional balance between free speech and respect for the feelings of others is evidently becoming harder to sustain. The resulting turbulence can only feed the propaganda of the right to attack or expel immigrants and those of alien culture. And it can only feed the appetite of government to restrain free speech where it really matters, as in criticising itself.

There is little doubt that had the Home Office’s original version of its religious hatred bill been enacted, publishing the cartoons would in Britain have been illegal. There was no need to prove intent to cause religious hatred, only “recklessness”. Even as amended by parliament the bill might allow a prosecution to portray the cartoons as insulting and abusive and to dismiss the allowed defence that the intention was to attack ideas rather than people.

The same zest for broad-sweep censorship was shown in Charles Clarke’s last anti-terrorism bill. Its bid (again curbed by parliament) was to outlaw the “negligent”, even if unintended, glorification of terrorism. It wanted to outlaw those whose utterances might have celebrated or glorified a violent change of government, whether or not they meant to do so. Clarke proposed to list “under order” those historical figures he regarded as terrorists and those he decided were “freedom fighters”. The latter, he intimated, might include Irish ones. This was historical censorship of truly Stalinist ambition. By such men are we now ruled.

That a modern home secretary should seek such powers illustrates the danger to which a collapse of media self-restraint might lead. Last week there were demands from some (not all) Muslim leaders for governments to “apologise” for the cartoons and somehow forbid their dissemination. It was a demand that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, commendably rejected. It assumed that governments had in some sense allowed the cartoons and were thus in a position to atone for them. Many governments might be happy to fall into this trap and seek to control deeds for which they may have to apologise. The glib assumption of blame where none exists feeds ministerial folie de grandeur, as with Blair’s ludicrous 1997 apology for the Irish potato famine.
In all matters of self-regulation the danger is clear. If important institutions, in this case the press, will not practise self-discipline then governments will practise it for them. Ascribing evil consequences to religious faith is a sure way of causing offence. Banning such offence is an equally sure way for a politician to curry favour with a minority and thus advance the authoritarian tendency. The present Home Office needs no such encouragement.

Offending an opponent has long been a feature of polemics, just as challenging the boundaries of taste has been a feature of art. It is rightly surrounded by legal and ethical palisades. These include the laws of libel and slander and concepts such as fair comment, right of reply and not stirring racial hatred. None of them is absolute. All rely on the exercise of judgment by those in positions of power. All rely on that bulwark of democracy, tolerance of the feelings of others. This was encapsulated by Lord Clark in his defining quality of civilisation: courtesy.

Too many politicians would rather not trust the self-restraint of others and would take the power of restraint onto themselves. Recent British legislation shows that a censor is waiting round every corner. This past week must have sent his hopes soaring because of the idiot antics of a few continental journalists.

The best defence of free speech can only be to curb its excess and respect its courtesy.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025511_1,00.html

U all sound like little bunch of losers with very little or no morals n defiantly ignorant of islaam . specially anonymous u got such an inexcusable mouth thanx for showing us wat a scumbag filth bucket u r with ur filthy cursing n death treat , u r the real terrorist shame on u , I doubt u had a normal up bringing n I will only expect the worst from u n ur type so go on paste more texts more cursing n more death treats J doesn’t bother me cuz low ppl like u only strengthen my faith thanx again . n tosin u hmm wat can I say u r a ignorant fool who happens to know only typing wonder how cuz I doubt u have any living brain cells like the rest of the ppl I am referring to in this response . now u hellloya u defiantly love hell to much J anywayz carry on with
ur hatered doesn’t bother us thanx

I see how ignorant or misinformed most of the none muslims r in this website pasting articles , its sooo unfortunate n im sad to say but its lack of morals that has driven these ppl to this point aswell as poor upbringing n lack of proper attention

Hope u all get a life n sort urselves out

May Allaah guide u all ameen

U all sound like little bunch of losers with very little or no morals n defiantly ignorant of islaam . specially anonymous u got such an inexcusable mouth thanx for showing us wat a scumbag filth bucket u r with ur filthy cursing n death treat , u r the real terrorist shame on u , I doubt u had a normal up bringing n I will only expect the worst from u n ur type so go on paste more texts more cursing n more death treats J doesn’t bother me cuz low ppl like u only strengthen my faith thanx again . n tosin u hmm wat can I say u r a ignorant fool who happens to know only typing wonder how cuz I doubt u have any living brain cells like the rest of the ppl I am referring to in this response . now u hellloya u defiantly love hell to much J anywayz carry on with
ur hatered doesn’t bother us thanx

I see how ignorant or misinformed most of the none muslims r in this website pasting articles , its sooo unfortunate n im sad to say but its lack of morals that has driven these ppl to this point aswell as poor upbringing n lack of proper attention

Hope u all get a life n sort urselves out

May Allaah guide u all ameen

i feel sorry for you,cant stand why women can marry those  barbarians,love is blind i know

i hope that serve for other women open eyes.

cant you see how they treat women in those countries?

is a hell

The insensitive cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban depicts Muslims as violent people, but what is very unfortunate is that their reaction has confirmed it.

The muslims that respond on this website are so damn backwards. The problem is that they represent how the rest of the muslim world feels towards us. The beheadings, the suicide bombers, their faggot leaders wearing dresses are all indicative of how fucked up they really are. As westerners we need to stay vigilant against these pigs and keep up the intolerance level against them and their satanic religion.

Europeans think that freedom of speech is guaranteed in Europe, and that they are defending it against Islamic pressure. This is a view that is widely propagated and defended by groups from across the political spectrum. Reality, however, presents us Muslims living in Europe with another experience. Muslims and others in Europe can not say everything they often want to say and they risk being arrested and prosecuted if they do. Muslims and other religious people can not express their disgust from homosexuality and clearly state that they believe it’s a sickness and a deviation without being persecuted for being homophobic.
Mr Jahjah certainly has a point here. Not only Muslims are not allowed to voice all their opinions. Only last week the French parliamentarian Christian Vanneste was sentenced in court to a heavy fine because he had stated that “homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity” and that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality.” Earlier last month a majority in the European Parliament called for sanctions against Poland and the Baltic states because their governments are said to be “homophobic.” In the Netherlands access to certain jobs in the civil service is effectively denied to anyone religious (be it Christian or Muslim) who refuses to participate in concluding same-sex marriages. And the EU wants to force doctors to perform abortions and euthanasia because, it says, the right to conscientious objection is not “unlimited.”

tsk tsk~Some of you need anger management. Do you angry people have friends?I think you should talk to them, so you wont be so bitter and hateful.
If you need more than that, I think theres a therapist who can save angry people from reaching a mental breakdown. But some i think, really needs to talk to their mommy

Make love people.Not war~
Life is too brief to be a hater

This is another shining example of why the rest of the planet will continue to dislike muslims. I am not muslim, so why should I have to follow the teachings of the Koran? I don't expect a muslim to pick up a bible and follow it to the letter, so they should return the same respect.

Perhaps the Koran should also teach you to lighten up a bit?? Is there anything in there about forgivness ... or is it just homicidal behaviour teachings?

No wonder so many countries want to turn the middle-east into glass!!! More of this stupidity and I don't blame them.

It really does shine a light on the paranoid mindset of the sandfleas.  Perhaps a cartoon depicting a stick of TNT in Muhammed's mouth would satisfy their fucked up psyche.

HI,

I stand by our Danish friends and hope that me and my family can take away some of the loss of business that Denmark has. I WILL buy Danish products, just to show support.

- m., a German

Ubi dubium, ibi libertas.

“It is entirely appropriate to publish political cartoons critical of religion, including images of Muhammad. After all, terrorism is always by the religiose; especially by Moslems. [When did you last hear of Humanists committing terrorist acts? (Never!)] The protests are wrong. Freedom of belief means that all people (not just religious people) are free to hold and express any beliefs they wish. Necessarily, then, there is no right to be free of "religious offence." The protesters are childish!”

Why only 12 cartoons. We should have created at least 1000....

Do not appologize, support Denmark!!!!!!!!!!

Jeesh,

As we all know, everything and everybody is fair game in this world of communication, commentary, and satire. Bush, Blair, Saddam, the list goes on and on. There have been a great many cartoons depicting Jesus, Buddha, and other holy "icons" in a great many ways that some enjoy/agree with and some not. I cannot understand how it is that this causes such an excessive "uproar". The world has to be getting very very tired and irritated with the vocal desire to have a double standard held up about their "icon" when it happens to be one of so many subjects of commentary. Especially when it comes from a community that will burn flags of other countries and images of their beloved icons.

It is very important that the news media and governments of Denmark and the rest of Europe stand firm on the issue of the right to criticize, even ridicule, Islam or any other religion. Religions around the globe do all they can to influence almost every aspect of public and private secular life. Therefore it is vital that individuals and societies retain the right to comment on religions and what they do. History has shown us that given the oportunity almost any religion will use prohibitions against "blasphamy" to stifle any and all criticism directed at them.

FUK MOHAMMED!FUK ISLAM!
DEATH TO THEM ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUK MOHAMMED FUK ISLAM DEATH TO THEM ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I defend the Western values of Freedom of Speech and public opinion. After all, we fought for centuries to have church and state and society separated. We should not let countries with medieval mentality and thinking tell us how to think! In our society, women are equal; they are not stoned if they are raped; in our society, we don't detonate ourselves along with other innocents because of belief, and call it martirdom; in our society, we don't restrict women from working and receiving higher education; we don't kill and threat people with different ideas; in our society, we don't beat and burn our wives and call it "domestic issues"; in our society, we don't forbid people what to drink and eat, how to dress and appear; we don't blackmail other countries by lowering oil production; we don't kill journalists and writers for their words; our people don't hijack airplanes and bash them into buildings with thousands of innocent people!!!

If the Islam is not happy with us, Islam should get it's smelly and inferior feet out of Europe and the rest of the civilized world! We had enough with these small-headed beasts!!!!

Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnians muslim leader

http://www.rs-icty.org/galleryphotos%20eng.htm

http://www.rs-icty.org/frontpage.htm

Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnians muslim leader

http://rs-icty.org/galerija/video/Izetbegovic-smotra.mpg

SHAME ON U!DO NOT SUPPORT THESE GUYS!MUSLIMS ARE NOT LIKE IN CARTOONS!THINK THAT MUSLIMS ARE DRAWING CARTOONS ABOUT YOUR PROPHET JESUS!
IT İS SO BAD,ISN'T İT!EVERYONE'S FAMILY,NATION
,COUNTRY AND RELIGIONS ARE SO BLESSED!WE MUST BE RESPECTFUL EACH OTHER!PEACE IN HOME IN WORLD!MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK (THE LEADER OF TURKS)

An good old saying is "the thougts are free". And everybodys opinion is it too, everywhere on the world. Even muslims are demanding for themselve religious freedom in a christian europe when they are living there . In contrast Christians have a verry hard life when they are living in a muslim country. The daily news are full of such cases. Freedom and religious freedom are good things. But they should be true and working for everybody and in all directions. Demanding form themselve and not giving to the opposite part is not a good idea and will not be working.
For me the discussion about these drawings is such a case. Why to the hell the muslims want to forbid the danish and european people an own opinion about how they are seeing Mohamed and the Islam ?
By the way some of them are verry good and are just fitting in the picture the muslims are themselve presenting to the world of themself .