Every day a new story that adds to the hilarity. Here's a good one out of Turkey, that next nation to enter the European Union. Let's hope that International Law is followed in this case and that the slut is punished harshly as befitting her crime. Inshallah. Who doesn't know not to go to an anti-cartoon demonstration without a headdress?! Who doesn't know the chewing gum protocols when calling for death to Denmark and the US?! Wearing trousers too?!  PULL-eeeeeeeeeezzze, already.

Sigh...

Susan

Police fail to stop attack on female journalist during anti-cartoons demonstration


Reporters Without Borders said today it was shocked at the failure of Turkish police to prevent an attack on a woman reporter, Aliye Cetinkaya, of the daily paper Sabah (The Morning), during a protest against publication of cartoons of Mohammed in the European press.

A group of 30 men broke away from the demonstration, on 10 February in the city of Konya, and attacked the journalist, accusing her of not having her head covered, of wearing trousers and chewing gum. They threw shoes and stones at her and called her a “slut.”

Police surrounding the demonstration did not help her and she had to be rescued by colleagues.

“The police failure is disgraceful,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “She could have been seriously injured. This incident discredits the police, who could be suspected of allowing it to happen and being on the side of the protesters. The authorities must find out who was responsible for this error.”

Cetinkaya filed a formal complaint on 13 February and the Konya prosecutor’s office began an investigation. The attackers were identified in police photos of the demonstration and are expected to be prosecuted. Four Turkish journalists’ organisations strongly protested against the attack and demanded action from the authorities.

One of the groups in the demonstration, the Islamist “Association for Training, Research and Cooperation of the People” (HEDA-DER) meanwhile filed a complaint against Cetinkaya the same day, accusing her of disturbing the demonstration, an offence that carries a fine or between 18 months and three years imprisonment under a 1983 law on public demonstrations.

The Konya prosecutor’s office is expected to decide in the next few days whether to formally investigate her for this.

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Some of these are funny - some are not. People were asked to sumbit their photoshoped version of shows.

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1898359 

Jordan .

Kelly

How Do You Live Your Dash?

Check out the Kids' blogs:
The CaleBlog and the Zoe Blog

Anyone up to making a quick million to kill a cartoonist?

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/17/D8FR44IO0.html 

At least when we put millions on the head of someone, that guy did more than insult a prophet.

Jordan .

Hey, where's the free speech in this equation.

Oh that's right. That's only for bashing certain people. 

Kelly

How Do You Live Your Dash?

Check out the Kids' blogs:
The CaleBlog and the Zoe Blog

Only if it's Jim Davis. 

In the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, cleric Maulana Yousef Qureshi said he had personally offered to pay a bounty of 500,000 rupees  to anyone who killed a Danish cartoonist, and two of his congregation put up additional rewards of $1 million and one million rupees plus a car.

"If the West can place a bounty on Osama bin Laden and Zawahri we can also announce reward for killing the man who has caused this sacrilege of the holy Prophet," Qureshi told Reuters, referring to the al Qaeda leader and his deputy Ayman al Zawahri.

Just a few updates:

The first article is the latest from Flemming Rose detailing his rationale for publishing the cartoons that lit the fuse of international Muslim outrage.

The second article is a review of some of the death and devastation to date.

Susan

Why I Published Those Cartoons

By Flemming Rose

Sunday, February 19, 2006; B01


Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad I decided to publish in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.

I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.

But the cartoon story is different.

Those examples have to do with exercising restraint because of ethical standards and taste; call it editing. By contrast, I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn't to provoke gratuitously -- and we certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.

At the end of September, a Danish standup comedian said in an interview with Jyllands-Posten that he had no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran.

This was the culmination of a series of disturbing instances of self-censorship. Last September, a Danish children's writer had trouble finding an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Three people turned down the job for fear of consequences. The person who finally accepted insisted on anonymity, which in my book is a form of self-censorship. European translators of a critical book about Islam also did not want their names to appear on the book cover beside the name of the author, a Somalia-born Dutch politician who has herself been in hiding.

Around the same time, the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.)

Finally, at the end of September, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with a group of imams, one of whom called on the prime minister to interfere with the press in order to get more positive coverage of Islam.

So, over two weeks we witnessed a half-dozen cases of self-censorship, pitting freedom of speech against the fear of confronting issues about Islam. This was a legitimate news story to cover, and Jyllands-Posten decided to do it by adopting the well-known journalistic principle: Show, don't tell. I wrote to members of the association of Danish cartoonists asking them "to draw Muhammad as you see him." We certainly did not ask them to make fun of the prophet. Twelve out of 25 active members responded.

We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.

The cartoons do not in any way demonize or stereotype Muslims. In fact, they differ from one another both in the way they depict the prophet and in whom they target. One cartoon makes fun of Jyllands-Posten, portraying its cultural editors as a bunch of reactionary provocateurs. Another suggests that the children's writer who could not find an illustrator for his book went public just to get cheap publicity. A third puts the head of the anti-immigration Danish People's Party in a lineup, as if she is a suspected criminal.

One cartoon -- depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban -- has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet.

On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those.

Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

This is exactly why Karl Popper, in his seminal work "The Open Society and Its Enemies," insisted that one should not be tolerant with the intolerant. Nowhere do so many religions coexist peacefully as in a democracy where freedom of expression is a fundamental right. In Saudi Arabia, you can get arrested for wearing a cross or having a Bible in your suitcase, while Muslims in secular Denmark can have their own mosques, cemeteries, schools, TV and radio stations.

I acknowledge that some people have been offended by the publication of the cartoons, and Jyllands-Posten has apologized for that. But we cannot apologize for our right to publish material, even offensive material. You cannot edit a newspaper if you are paralyzed by worries about every possible insult.

I am offended by things in the paper every day: transcripts of speeches by Osama bin Laden, photos from Abu Ghraib, people insisting that Israel should be erased from the face of the Earth, people saying the Holocaust never happened. But that does not mean that I would refrain from printing them as long as they fell within the limits of the law and of the newspaper's ethical code. That other editors would make different choices is the essence of pluralism.

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.

The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.

Since the Sept. 30 publication of the cartoons, we have had a constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people's beliefs. Never before have so many Danish Muslims participated in a public dialogue -- in town hall meetings, letters to editors, opinion columns and debates on radio and TV. We have had no anti-Muslim riots, no Muslims fleeing the country and no Muslims committing violence. The radical imams who misinformed their counterparts in the Middle East about the situation for Muslims in Denmark have been marginalized. They no longer speak for the Muslim community in Denmark because moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against them.

In January, Jyllands-Posten ran three full pages of interviews and photos of moderate Muslims saying no to being represented by the imams. They insist that their faith is compatible with a modern secular democracy. A network of moderate Muslims committed to the constitution has been established, and the anti-immigration People's Party called on its members to differentiate between radical and moderate Muslims, i.e. between Muslims propagating sharia law and Muslims accepting the rule of secular law. The Muslim face of Denmark has changed, and it is becoming clear that this is not a debate between "them" and "us," but between those committed to democracy in Denmark and those who are not.

This is the sort of debate that Jyllands-Posten had hoped to generate when it chose to test the limits of self-censorship by calling on cartoonists to challenge a Muslim taboo. Did we achieve our purpose? Yes and no. Some of the spirited defenses of our freedom of expression have been inspiring. But tragic demonstrations throughout the Middle East and Asia were not what we anticipated, much less desired. Moreover, the newspaper has received 104 registered threats, 10 people have been arrested, cartoonists have been forced into hiding because of threats against their lives and Jyllands-Posten's headquarters have been evacuated several times due to bomb threats. This is hardly a climate for easing self-censorship.

Still, I think the cartoons now have a place in two separate narratives, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe. The narrative in the Middle East is more complex, but that has very little to do with the cartoons.

---

Nigeria cartoon riots kill 16
Churches burned in widespread violence as Danish cartoonist defends publication
Amelia Hill and Anushka Asthana
Sunday February 19, 2006
UK Guardian
Observer

Rioting over the controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad claimed another 16 lives last night in Nigeria as churches were burned by protesting Muslims.

The violence erupted as the Danish cartoonist whose drawings originally sparked the furore, Kurt Westergaard, used an interview with a British newspaper to defend the right to a free press - and said the Islamic faith provided 'spiritual ammunition' for terrorism.

More than two weeks after the controversy began, after-effects are still being felt around the world. The first protests in Nigeria flared in the provinces of Borno and Katsina: witnesses said hotels and shops were torched by protesters who ran wild after police fired teargas to disperse them.

In Britain, a poll of Muslims last night found evidence of growing alienation, with four in 10 calling for religious sharia law to be imposed in parts of the UK with a mainly Muslim population. The law specifies stonings and amputations as punishments, and involves religious police bringing suspects before courts.

One in five also expressed some sympathy with the 'feelings and motives' of the July 7 bombers. However the survey for the Sunday Telegraph found 91 per cent still felt loyal to Britain and only one per cent actually backed the London bomb attacks.

The cartoonist at the heart of the row, who has gone into hiding after a bounty was put on his head and conducted his interview with the Glasgow Herald newspaper via written questions, said he had not expected such controversy but did not regret the drawings - the most controversial of which depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban - or their publication.

He defended it as 'a protest against the fact that we perhaps are going to have double standards [in Denmark and Western Europe] for freedom of expression and freedom of the press'. The inspiration for it was, he said, 'terrorism - which gets its spiritual ammunition from Islam.'

The Italian reforms minister, Roberto Calderoli, resigned yesterday after being blamed for sparking clashes in Libya - which killed 11 - by wearing a T-shirt on TV bearing the most controversial cartoon. In Tripoli, the General People's Congress fired the interior minister, Nasser al-Mabrouk Adballah, and local police chiefs, saying disproportionate force had been used against protesters.

The Nigerian riots were the first protests in Africa's most populous country, which is divided equally between Christians and Muslims. The worst of the trouble, involving 15 deaths, was in the north eastern state of Borno - a predominantly Muslim state with a sizeable Christian population, which has recently seen an increase in militancy. Troops were deployed in the state capital to restore order.

In London another protest against the publication of cartoons brought more than 10,000 Muslims on to the streets yesterday.

The rally and march, organised by the Muslim Action Committee, saw scores of imams, who usually avoid such demonstrations, on the streets of the capital. The cartoons were originally published in Denmark in September, but only triggered worldwide protests when they were re-published around Europe earlier this month.

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

I've decided for today's Mo-toon update that a picture will be worth 1000 words. My only question with this particular sign is, if the Holocaust is a Zionist myth, why is Hitler praised?

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

ZING!  Oh, I am so totally going to steal that, should the opportunity ever arise...

Susan! That´s a really weird picture!!!! Such childish behaviour.

Oh, Im with JVSCant on the -thing

Ditte 

Yes, Ditte, the Cartoon Wars have made for many splendid photo opportunities.

Yesterday I was recalling the 20th century. Remember way back then??? Back then, to me Islam was just another religion. I didn't think about it very often except in terms of the collection of art at the LA County Art Museum where I was a docent. I enjoyed those galleries with the Persian rugs, calligraphy, tile work and ceramics. 

But back then, if someone had told you -- or if someone had pitched a movie script -- that in the early years of the 21st century, a Danish newspaper would publish 12 innocuous cartoons of guys labeled "Mohammed" and that as a result, for weeks on end, there would be murder and mayhem, arson and death threats across the Muslim world, who would have found that a realistic concept?

Not I.

I still cannot get past the intellectural disconnect.

And I wonder how it all plays out. Something tells me it's a big deal.

Last night I watched the 2nd half of a really good Frontline documentary called "The Insurgents" which had incredible first hand coverage of the angry lads in Iraq. My mouth hangs open at what comes out of theirs. It becomes a matter of how many, how dangerous, how much longer, how much more violent, how much more widespread???

I haven't a clue, but none of this bodes well. I think a resulting free-floating anxiety pervades us all.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

 I'm gonna bet it all, Alex!

What is Lawrence Welk's opening line to his orchestra?

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

OHMYGAWD, no, I didn't realize those were links! That was HILARIOUS! Did you do that or what? I know it couldn't be the humorless BBC who are too consumed with maintaining their straight ahead unbiased objectivity to ever engage in such -- uh -- stereotyping, even if it's only in jest.

Who'd have guessed that the Clash of Civilizations was going to be over what's funny and what's not funny?

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Har har, those links are better than sausage!

Rex Murphy again.

- - - - -

In the shadow of intimidation

We are well into the third week now of the violent backlash against the publication of 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper, some of which portrayed the Prophet Mohammed, and some of which directed a satiric thrust at the cartoonists themselves or the newspaper that published the cartoons. I add that qualifier because the near universal decision of the Western press not to publish the cartoons may have some people believing that all of the original set were exclusively directed at defying the supposed taboo against any representations of the Prophet.

All were not. A few of the cartoonists who submitted pictures poked a little fun either at themselves, or at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten itself. One, in particular, has a schoolboy, named Mohammed, in front of a blackboard on which is written “Jyllands-Posten's journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs.” If nothing else that picture shows a certain sprightliness of self-consciousness, not at all concordant with the idea that the only intent of Jyllands-Posten was to stimulate insult, or worse, against Islam.

One of the severe handicaps of understanding this story is that those who have not actually seen the pictures that were published may have a grossly exaggerated notion of what was published, that they are Goyaesque renderings of great power and savagery. Well, whatever else these cartoons may be, they are closer in tone to Charles Schulz than to Goya.

Jyllands-Posten may have been insensitive in publishing them, they may have been careless or ignorant of the degree to which pious Muslims in Denmark or elsewhere might take exceptional offence. But, judging just from the tone of the cartoons themselves, they were neither brutal nor savage.

The fact that many people have not seen the cartoons follows from the decision of the majority of the Western media, made in the early days of some of the large and violent protests against the cartoons, not to publish them. By and large, the Western press presented the case that publishing the pictures would be both incendiary and disrespectful.

I think that was a responsible line to take — but it was also incomplete. The other reason not to publish the cartoons was the awareness among editors and broadcasters that it was dangerous to do so. From the celebrated case of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for the publication of The Satanic Verses, to the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh following the broadcast of his 10-minute film Submission, there has been a justifiable dread in the Western press about the consequence of offending the more extremist elements of Muslim opinion.

It cannot have escaped anyone's attention that the riots, embassy burnings, church burnings and deaths that marked the outcry against the cartoons, by ostensibly pious Muslim protesters, surpasses in substance and scale by some immeasurable degree whatever offence, intentional or unwitting, the original portraits or caricatures originally conveyed.

If the mayhem and threats were meant to offer some counterstatement to the satirical intent of these contentious pictures, they worked dismally against that purpose. And if their point was that religious sensibilities should be shielded against editorial comment or representation, a neutral observer of the violence in a dozen countries saw in it little that breathed either sensibility or sanctity. The reaction was not proportionate, on any scale, to the perceived offence, and if it had any signature characteristic it was one of threat and intimidation.

I am not sure we can have a dialogue based on “respect” that is threaded with the idea of violent retaliation if one side of the conversation does not have its way. The dynamic of any dialogue cannot be ceded to the extremists for that is the nullification of the idea of dialogue. “Agree with us — or else” is not a seminar topic.

Judging by the number of people who have died in the riots so far, the number of Middle Eastern journalists in jail, the number of embassies and churches burned, the fatwas issued against the cartoonists and the bounties to encourage their execution, the “or else” faction of Islam is by far the dominant one.

If we in the West feel the shadow of intimidation, what can it be like for those artists, writers, or citizens in the heartland of Islam in the current climate, who wish to advance a respectful dissent from state authority or the actions of the mob?

An Egyptian judge, Said al-Ashmawy, quoted in The New York Times, puts that question to my mind perfectly: “How can we write? Who is going to protect me? Who is going to publish for me in the first place? With the Islamization of the society, the list of taboos has been increasing daily. You should not write about religion. You should not write about politics or women. Then what is left?”

A handful of Danish cartoons has at least clarified what's at stake.

- - - - -

Jamie, your mock-BBC article may not have been too far off the mark. Here's a fun piece where Tom and Jerry are taken to task. I'm telling you there may well be such a condition known as xenophobia but a more specific term for a greater condition in the Muslim world could be called "Jew-o-ophobia." Or, if you'd rather, "Jew-sessive Compulsive Disorder."

From our friends in Iran. Once again. And we worry about our educational system. This from the Minister of Education's representative who isn't even educated enough to know Tom and Jerry are not Disney cartoons! Who knew Disney was Jewish?  Not Disney, I'll bet.  Ah, but he does hit the nail on the head with that previously little known subversive Jewish plot to make mice cute and appealing.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Glad to see Salman is out of the Fatwa Closet these days.  Nothing was so disturbing as that day when he wrote an open letter claiming to really, really, really be a Muslim once again, just after the initial days of his death threats.  He wised up soon after but it was, I'm sure, difficult for him to write his fake "I embrace Islam" tract.

Here in SoCal there was a l'il college gathering to discuss the Mo-toon controversy.  I swear some of these college students have the individuality of the Chinese re-education happy campers during the Cultural Revolution.  The chants continue as the invasion of the student body snatchers goes on and on.  A rote chant is the product of blocked intellectual processing. 

Cartoon Display Protested

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Well, it seems the Cartoon Wars have simmered down but I just found these photos of a "protest" in that once great secular city of Istanbul, Turkey. A pitcher is worth a thousand of 'em...

Susan

A Sea of Shrouds

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

The latest update. Danish Muslims are SUING!  Waaaaaa, they're still mad as hell and telling the UN Commissioner on Human Rights their grievances.  Oh that's too rich. 

Read all about it...

Susan

Times Online March 17, 2006
Danish Muslims sue over Muhammad cartoons
By Jenny Booth and agencies

Danish Muslim groups are to report Denmark to the UN Commissioner on Human Rights for failing to prosecute the newspaper that first published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The 27 Muslim groups also plan to sue the newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, for defamation in a Danish court, according to their lawyer, Michael Christiani Havemann.

"Denmark is obliged through the UN to secure the civil rights of its citizens," Havemann said by telephone. "The national prosecutor won’t pursue the case and, therefore, acts as a barrier to justice to the complainants."

Henning Fode, Denmark’s director of public prosecutions, announced on Wednesday that he would not charge Jyllands-Posten, ruling that the drawings it published last September did not violate Denmark’s laws against blasphemy and racist speech.

Mr Fode said that the cartoons could be considered an affront to the Prophet, but did not break Danish law. (Yeah, but...)  The prosecutor’s decision prompted the Foreign Ministry to upgrade its travel warnings for Danes traveling in Muslim countries from Algeria to Malaysia

The cartoons, one of which shows Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, were reprinted by media worldwide in January and February, and sparked a wave of protests around the Islamic world.

Protesters were killed in some of the most violent demonstrations, a number of Arab countries broke off diplomatic relations with Europe, and several European embassies were attacked. A boycott on Danish goods started in Saudi Arabia on January 26 and spread to dozens of Muslim countries.

Sunni Muslim tradition bans any image of the Prophet, since depicting him risks insulting him or encouraging idolatry.

Mr Havemann said that he would file the complaint within weeks to the Geneva-based human rights commission. "We think we have a good case," he said.

Protests against the cartoons have yet to die down. Today more than 20,000 supporters of a radical Islamic group held a peaceful rally in eastern Pakistan, accusing their Government of being "soft" on the West over the controversy.

"The government should have taken a hard stance against those countries where these cartoons were published to insult our beloved Prophet Muhammad," said Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the leader of Jamaat al-Dawat group.

The Pakistan Government recently put Mr Saeed under house arrest for several days to stop him from leading rallies against the cartoons, after five people died in violent protests last month.

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Found this today on Euro-Pundit. He's calling it a "Mo-Mickey" cartoon. Keep 'em coming! Looks like it says "Freedom of Speech = Freedom to Ridiculue." This rally was held in Trafalgar Square last week in London. Some on hand were urging tolerance in the face of "Toon-o-phobia."

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

The Mohammed cartoon backlash continues.  Humiliation by cartoon is a tough trauma to mend.  Verma has an idea.  Anybody know the going exchange rate for this:  Rs 51 crore ??? 

It's hard to understand what a pressing issue this 'humiliation' thingie is in the Muslim world.

Susan 

Verma backs bounty for Danish cartoonist
Press Trust Of India

May 6, 2006


Barabanki: Virtually endorsing an Uttar Pradesh minister's announcement of a reward for anyone beheading those reponsible for caricatures of Prophet Mohammed, Samajwadi Party leader Beni Prasad Verma on Saturday said he would give half his properties to the person who killed the cartoonist.

Speaking to reporters here, SP General Secretary Verma, alleged Christian countries had always been "anti-Muslim".

Haji Yaqoob Qureshi, Uttar Pradesh's minister for Haj, had earlier announced a reward of Rs 51 crore for anyone who beheaded the artist reponsible for the cartoons first carried by a Danish publication.

The move triggered a widespread controversy that cost Qureshi his ministerial post.

Verma said the Samajwadi Party had always fought for the dignity and pride of Muslims and would not tolerate their humiliation.

Alleging that the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre was anti-Muslim, Verma claimed it had pressurised Uttar Pradesh Governor T V Rajeshwar not to give his assent to the Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Urdu University Bill.
 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin