Taking Offense

How many people will Muslims murder because some Danish newspaper published cartoons of Mohammed? Why is this an issue? What is wrong with our nations that this could be a topic of conversation? They, the Muslim community at large, are primitives, murdering women, blowing up civilians on busses, selling children into prostitution, committing any and every crime known to Man, and our societies pretend there is no problem, a slight problem, our problem, our fault. Let's look at a bit of Islmaic reaction to cartoons and compare it to a bit of reality. Then let's sit back and awiat the ripening of our rage. At this point, with so much cofusion among our populations about who will be the first to dance, we must wait. And then when the floor is crowded with other people many others will dance, knowing they're covered by the masses. That's nature. We wait. In the meantime we can knit and furrow and fume.

A letter from http://jihadwatch.org:

What was need to call and publish those cartoons. In stead of restraining from such unnecessary, provoking steps, the media needs to be responsible and people like infidel4ever should remain infidel for ever. They cannot understand feelings of the faithful. They at least should not be a party to hurt others.

Posted by: auditor at October 14, 2005 10:47 AM

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A piece (excerpted) in contrast:

Something Rotten in Denmark?[1]

Daniel Pipes & Lars Hedegaard

A Muslim group in Denmark announced a few days ago that a 30,000 dollar bounty would be paid for the murder of several prominent Danish Jews,[2] a threat that garnered wide international notice.[3] Less well known is that this is just one problem associated with Denmark's approximately 200,000 Muslim immigrants. The key issue is that many of them show little desire to fit into their adopted country.

For years, Danes lauded multiculturalism and insisted they had no problem with the Muslim customs - until one day they found that they did. Some major issues:

• Living on the dole: Third-world immigrants - most of them Muslims from countries such as Turkey, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Iraq - constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending.[4]

• Engaging in crime: Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5,4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists,[5] an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes.[6]

• Self-imposed isolation: Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish less mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane.[7]

• Importing unacceptable customs: Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death - are one problem.

• Another threat is to kill Muslims who convert out of Islam: One Kurdish convert to Christianity, who went public to explain why she had changed religion, felt the need to hide her face and conceal her identity, fearing for her life.[8]

• Fomenting anti-Semitism: Muslim violence threatens Denmark's approximately 6,000 Jews, who increasingly depend on police protection. Jewish parents were told by one school principal that she could not guarantee their children's safety and were advised to attend another institution.[9] Anti-Israel marches have turned into anti-Jewish riots. One organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, openly calls on Muslims to "kill all Jews … wherever you find them."[10]

Seeking Islamic law: Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic law once Denmark's Muslim population grows large enough[11] - a not-that remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will be Muslim.[12]
more: http://www.sharia.dk/Skribenter/hedegaard/rotten_denmark.html

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What does a Muslim imam say about the cartoons in a Danish paper when he and the rest of the umma could be hanging murderers among themselves:

'This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims,' Imam Raed Hlayhel wrote in a statement. 'Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world. We demand an apology!'

Jyllands-Posten described the cartoons as a defence for 'secular democracy and right to expression'.

Hlayhel, however, said the newspaper had abused democracy with the single intention of humiliating Muslims.

[....]

It is not the first time Hlayhel has created headlines in Denmark. One year ago, he became the target of criticism from Muslims and non-Muslims alike, when he said in a sermon during Friday prayer, that Danish women's behaviour and dress invited rape.
http://www.jp.dk/english_news/artikel:aid=3306572/
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Here's the story itself. Read it and wonder who's going to die because of Muslim offense:

Cartoons have Muslims threatening newspaper

By The Copenhagen Post

Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten has been forced to hire security guard to protect employees from angry Muslims, after it printed a series of cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed

Death threats have forced daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten to hire security guards to protect its employees, after printing twelve cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed.

The newspaper has been accused of deliberately provoking and insulting Muslims by publishing the cartoons. The newspaper urged cartoonists to send in drawings of the prophet, after an author complained that nobody dared to illustrate his book on Mohammed. The author claimed that illustrators feared that extremist Muslims would find it sacrilegious to break the Islamic ban on depicting Mohammed.

Twelve illustrators heeded the newspaper's call, and sent in cartoons of the prophet, which were published in the newspaper earlier this month.

Muslim spokesmen demanded that Jyllands-Posten retracted the cartoons and apologised.

'We have taken a few necessary measures in the situation, as some people seem to have taken offence and are sending threats of different kinds,' the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Carsten Juste, told national broadcaster DR.

The same day as the newspaper published the cartoons, it received a threatening telephone call against 'one of the twelve illustrators', as the caller said. Shortly afterwards, police arrested a 17-year-old, who admitted to phoning in the threat.

Since then, journalists and editors alike have received threats by email and the telephone. The newspaper told its staff to remain alert, but then decided to hire security guards to protect its Copenhagen office.

'Up until now, we have only had receptionists in the lobby. But we don't feel that they should sit down there by themselves, so we posted a guard there as well,' Juste said.

Muslim organisations, like the Islamic Religious Community, have demanded an apology, but Juste rejected the idea. He said the cartoons had been a journalistic project to find out how many cartoonists refrained from drawing the prophet out of fear.

'We live in a democracy,' he said. 'That's why we can use all the journalistic methods we want to. Satire is accepted in this country, and you can make caricatures. Religion shouldn't set any barriers on that sort of expression. This doesn't mean that we wish to insult any Muslims.'

Juste's opinion was not shared by Århus imam Raed Hlayhel, who gave an interview to the internet edition of Arabic satellite news channel al-Jazeera to protest the newspaper's cartoons.

Hlayhel told al-Jazeera's reporter that he considered the cartoons derisive of Islam, and described one of the drawings as showing Mohammed wearing a turban-like bomb, and another as brandishing a sabre, with two burka-clad women behind him.

Hlayhel said he did not understand how such illustrations could be printed with reference to freedom of expression, when Denmark did not tolerate the slightest sign of anti-Semitism.

Al-Jazeera concluded that the drawings seemed bizarre.
http://www.jp.dk/english_news/artikel:aid=3318352/
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There is a philosophical side to this great issue of our time. There's also the personal experience of people who've been in the hick of things in the Balkans and the Middle east and various other places. Philosophy is essential in the uncovering of a carefully reasoned response for a future political reorganisation. At the same time there's a limit at which one must consider the call of strategic confrontation. Others draw cartoons. We'll leave you, dear and gentle reader, to draw conclusions.