For those who haven't been reading newspapers or watching the news: a few months ago, a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophed Mohammed as a terrorist. Little happened for a few months, then the Saudi state-run press digs up the issue, perhaps to distract attention from the Hajj deaths, and the Muslim world erupts in flames of protest, most specifically in places where the local powers that be find it expedient to fan the flames. A few extremists do things like storm and burn down Danish embassies, gun down Christian priests, or rally on the streets of London calling for suicide bombings and the beheading of blasphemers, doing little to refute the cartoons' association of Islam with violence and extremism which, presumably, they found so offensive. Meanwhile, many countries in the Islamic world have banned trade with Denmark until the government apologises and punishes those involved (because, of course, the only way something can be published is with government approval). Carlsberg and Danish bacon producers are reported to be "unconcerned".

Anyway, here is an overview of the incident. Be warned: it contains copies of the Satanic Drawings; it also contains anti-Semitic cartoons published in the state-controlled press of various Arab countries, which, inexplicably, have failed to result in Jewish mobs razing Saudi and Omanian embassies.

Posted by: threeze | http://neuralvoid.com | Thu Feb 9 00:26:09 2006

you managed to put my thoughts on the matter into such a useful post. now, when anyone asks me what i think, i will just flick them a link to this.

cheers.

Posted by: bizarro | bizarro.typepad.com | Thu Feb 9 21:19:33 2006

No, you won't see Jewish mobs burning embassies, but you might see the Israeli airforce bombing the offices of the newspapers...

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/ | Thu Feb 9 23:58:04 2006

Are you saying that the Israeli airforce has been known to bomb newspaper offices in Arab states in retaliation for anti-Semitic cartoons?

Posted by: El Bizarro | bizarro.typepad.com | Fri Feb 17 12:20:29 2006

Well, I can't think of any concrete examples off the top of my head, but they have routinely bombed the crap out of "dissidents" in the west bank and the gaza strip, many of whom were reporters and journalists for arab news organisations. Oh yeah, and the Israeli secret service were implicated in the plot to bomb Al Jazeera with the US. The combination of the extremely powerful Jewish lobby in many western countries which results in self censorship for many outlets, and the Israelis lack of scruples in using their military to attack all manner of "targets" outside of their "sovreign" territory, there's really no need for Israel-supporting Jewish mobs to do anything other than keep the money flowing...

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