Time Immortal

Completely unacceptable. I guess even the Danes have a point at which they fold and give in to fear of Islamic violence.

He was “too much of a security risk.” Unconscionable. This man should be a hero of every freedom-loving Dane. “Danish Caricaturist of Muhammad Fame Now Homeless,” from Spiegel (thanks to all who sent this in):

Draw a picture offensive to Muslim extremists, and you might find yourself without a roof. Ask Kurt Westergaard, one of the twelve Danish cartoonists whose autumn 2005 Muhammad caricatures lead to violent protests throughout the Muslim world. He was booted from his police-protected hotel room on Feb. 15 for being “too much of a security risk.” And now the 73-year-old cartoonist and his wife are without a place to live.

Westergaard was forced to leave his actual residence in November after the Danish security and intelligence agency, PET, informed him of a “concrete” plan to murder him, according to the paper that originally published the cartoons, Jyllands-Posten.

It is much more likely, now, that both the cartoonist and his wife will end up getting the Theo van Gogh treatment, living (as they are) exposed on the streets of Denmark. That would be a travesty, O Reader, and an indictment of the Danish government and its police service as well.

Around 11am today a bomb exploded in a solarium in Copenhagen. The suntan shop was situated just by the national football stadium in Oesterbro, a peaceful and affluent part of the Danish capital. The explosion completely destroyed the shop and the surrounding flats were also damaged. The police are putting the fact that no one was hurt down to sheer luck; two other bags were found in the area and have been destroyed. Two young men between the ages of 15 and 25 were seen running away from the crime scene; they were described as “foreign-looking” and are now wanted by the police.

The explosion is a drastic escalation of the week-long riots on the streets Denmark where young Muslim men have vented their anger and frustration towards Danish society by setting fire to cars and burning bonfires in the streets. The rioters claim that their action is a protest against the reprinting of the prophet cartoons, which took place last Wednesday when a unified Danish press decided to print/reprint the cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. The decision to reprint was taken when the Danish security service (PET) notified the public that three men had been arrested on suspicion of plotting the murder of the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard.

However, it is debatable whether the reprinting of the cartoons was the real reason behind the rioting. The night before they were published the air on Oesterbro was thick with the smoke of bonfires and burning rubber, carried by the wind from neighbouring Noerrebro, where much of the rioting has taken place. The cartoons no doubt had an explosive effect on matters, but the fire was already burning.

Denmark, once acknowledged for her liberal stance and social egalitarianism, has over the last years become an increasingly polarised society where the differences between the Danish majority and migrants and especially Muslim migrants have been the dominant political agenda.

…

In certain neighbourhoods the atmosphere is now so tense that I avoid going there when in Copenhagen. Far from the prophet cartoon crisis clearing the air like most good arguments, this argument only led to division. There are countless examples of qualified foreigners who can’t get a job in Denmark simply because of the sound of their surname. On the other hand, many young Muslim migrants have behaved like thugs, vandalising their neighbourhoods. The situation is clearly untenable; the question is: who’s got the remedy to solve it?

Any European government could come up with the remedy to solve the problem — the real question is: would any European government have the necessary stones to implement harsh restrictions on immigration and harsh policing measures in predominantly immigrant communities? Basically, the degree to which a European nation espouses multiculturalism as a virtue is the degree to which that country is imperiled by a surge of radical Islam within its immigrant population; the degree to which a European nation demands that immigrants integrate into the prevailing culture of that nation is the degree to which that nation might have a fighting chance in the years to come.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: SDA)

I keep trying to repeat the mantra that most Muslims are reasonable sorts. My meditations on this matter keep getting interrupted by the discovery of counter-examples:

Keep fearing for your life you white trash.

Anyone who wages war against Allah and His Messenger defiantly and arrogantly, will inevitably face the banner of Laa Ilaaha Illallaah: they will face those who will show them no mercy. “Humble with the believers, harsh against the Disbelievers.”

We wish we were able to express our extreme anger…and Walahi, our blood is boiling and our veins are shaking and our muscles are tightening?

All we can say to the cartoonists is: you fools seem to forget the end of Theo Van Gogh (may Allah’s curse be upon him) and forget to realize that even many of the Danish citizens who are Muslims will not tolerate it because they know the story of and what the Companions of Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu ‘alayhi wassallam) did to him and they know that their Religion allows such a thing.

Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death — by a young European Muslim named Mohammed — for making a movie about Islam’s subjugation of women. That, unfortunately, is a too-common paradigm these days: mock Islam and die.

Interestingly, if you read the comments at inshallahshaheed’s post (linked above), it’s interesting how most of the Muslim commentators do not rush to condemn the part of the post that calls for the death of Kurt Westergaard and his compatriots; they object to the use of the term “white trash,” fearing it might be racist talk (which would, of course, not be permissible according to the Koran, don’t y’know!).

Nice, guys. Way to prioritize.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: The Jawa Report)

Kathy challenges all bloggers to re-post the Muhammed cartoons in a show of solidarity with the Danes.

And here’s a detail on the cartoon drawn by Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who was the target of the recent murder plot:

So say we all!

Following the arrests of three Muslims for plotting to kill Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew Muhammad wearing a bomb turban, the Danish media have today republished the offending illustration.

Good for them. The minute it became clear that violence and intimidation were the response the western press should have said: Okay, you want to kill one of us, you’ll have to kill us all. The Danes have now taken an important stand against Islamic encroachments on freedom of expression.

In Canada, by contrast, the state hauled the only publisher of the cartoons, my old boss Ezra Levant, into one of its thought-crime courts at the behest of a raving incoherent imam. And all the jelly-spined squish of a Minister of Justice has done is issue lamely evasive talking points. Nonetheless, the imam has now folded, and is calling (insofar as I can follow him) for the matter to be settled according to Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code or some Islamic understanding thereof. Ezra is going on the offensive.

The lesson is, if you face down these bullies, you can win and stop the lights going out on liberty. But you won’t get much help from your government.

Good on the Danes for this. There really is only one proper response to terror and bullying — stand up to it, maybe even do again whatever you did in the first place to anger the bully.

That’s a truth one learns even on the playground at school. It’s a pity that most world leaders seem to have forgotten that lesson by the time they become presidents and prime ministers, chancellors and…well, whatever.

I never learned to fight, not in the sense of taking a martial art or being shown by my father how to throw a right hook properly. And personally, I’m not keen on fighting when it can be avoided. But I know how to throw a punch, and I have a pretty decent idea of what parts of the human anatomy to aim for if I need to make the first hit hurt.

When I was in the first grade, I got picked on an awful lot, especially by two boys in particular. One of them had me cornered on the second level of the playground one particular recess, and wouldn’t let up. Until that point, I’d been trying to be a bit more passive in my defiance, shrugging off the slights and what have you. Not this time. This time, I turned around and punched the kid right in the chest. He stumbled backward through the gap in the railing where the sliding pole was; it was February, so the sand below was still icy and hard.

He never messed with me again. In fact, when next I ran into him (in high school), we got along just fine.

That’s a fact about life that I hope my kids are able to learn one day, and a fact about life that I think we all need to keep in mind when we look at how we deal with the world. Creating conflict for conflict’s sake is not right, obviously, but there are some things which we simply cannot afford to tolerate, lest we invite the antagonist(s) to take further advantage of us; only be resisting, with as much force as is required, can we actually effect meaningful, positive change.

That’s certainly the case with radical Islam, and the Danes deserve all applause for refusing to be cowed by the fact that some of their immigrant citizens have been plotting murder and mayhem. That they have republished the offending cartoon in spite of the threat of violence is the right decision, because it speaks volumes about how violent reprisals against freedom of expression, even odious freedom of expression, can not, must not, and will not be tolerated.

The world needs as much of that right now as it can possibly get.

Yup, one of the Muhammad cartoonists was about to have a run-in with the peaceful practitioners of the Religion of Peace.

Danish police arrested several people Tuesday suspected of plotting to kill one of the 12 cartoonists behind the Prophet Muhammad drawings that sparked an uproar in the Muslim world two years ago, authorities said.

The arrests were made in pre-dawn raids in Aarhus, western Denmark, “to prevent a terror-related murder,” the police intelligence agency said. It did not say how many people were arrested nor did it mention which cartoonist was targeted.

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the drawings on Sept. 30, 2005, said the suspects were planning to kill its cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, 73.

“There were very concrete murder plans against Kurt Westergaard,” said Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor-in-chief.

…

Westergaard’s cartoon, which showed Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a lit fuse, was one of the most controversial.

There is a very real and terrible reality at work in the world — insult Islam, or say anything to criticize it or its (false) prophet, and you take your life in your own hands.

The cartoons were later reprinted by a range of Western publications, and they sparked deadly protests in parts of the Muslim world.

Now, I’m generally in favour of the argument that suggests that the rage and murder one sees coming out of the Islamic community is the work of a handful of radicals, and not supported by the wider population. Until I remember that millions of Muslims world-wide rioted after the publication of these cartoons and called for the deaths of the newspaper editors who published them, and of the authors who drew them. That wasn’t the work of a handful of radicals, but of millions of everyday folks who took to the streets in riots that ultimately claimed several lives, including that of a priest. Interestingly, none of the murder victims were, to my recollection, Danes.

But why should that matter? One dead infidel is as good as another, right?

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

I also want to believe that Islam is a religion whose adherents are capable of a measure of reason, but then I remember bits of theology like this and have to give my head a shake. Why, at times, does it seem that all of Islam is pre-supposed on conspiracy theories and fear of the weakness of the religion’s adherents. Or, to put it another way, Catholicism has a huge body of art tradition devoted to depictions not only of Christ, but of Mary and the saints as well. And while Jack Chick and his cohort of fans might assert that this makes us idolaters, as a practicing Catholic I can assure the reader that to say so could not be farther from the truth. Simple depictions are nothing to fear, and there is no reason to fear that the depiction itself will become an idol.

Is the average Muslim in the street capable of separating in mind the depiction of the prophet from the actual man (neither of which should be worshipped anyway — all worship should be directed unto God)? Or is the average Muslim so ignorant that he cannot tell the difference between a picture of the prophet and the actual man who lived some 1400 years ago?

Kathy links to an amusing, if vulgar, response to those who would plot to murder the cartoonists, and I can’t help but agree with some of its sentiments. In many respects, the Muslim immigrants to Western nations come fleeing economic despair, war, famine, or any of the myriad problems that otherwise afflict third-world nations. They come from divided families and unsafe locales. And in the West, they can find reunion and safety, freedom and support. In many respects, they can even find governments willing to pay them for being there, via public welfare funds.

And what can the West expect in return? More and more, it seems that all the West can expect is honour killings, violent riots based on the slightest imagined provocation, and demands for Sharia law. And, now, plots to murder cartoonists.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!