Tag: motoons

Cartoon Rage: "They are basically saying, 'If you say we are violent, we are going to kill you.'"

Spencer: Cartoon Rage in Denmark

Debra J. Saunders (Townhall)

“If you give in to intimidation, you will not get less intimidation, you will get more intimidation.”

Intimidation and Tyranny

While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is celebrating his $1 million-plus book deal on a 600-acre estate and enjoying his status as a lefty fringe hero, former cartoonist Molly Norris is in hiding.

The moral of this column is that in today’s world, cartoons, if they target Islam, can be more hazardous to your health than crossing the mighty U.S. government and its allies.

Jewish Plan: Greater Israel Will Light Fuse

Swedish and Danish authorities arrested four suspected militant Islamic jihadists last week for allegedly planning a terrorist attack before this weekend. Their target was the Jyllands-Posten news bureau in Copenhagen. In 2006, the newspaper became the target of terrorist threats after it printed controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. Authorities say the suspects arrested planned to use the same “swarm” tactics used in the 2008 Mumbai killing spree that left at least 160 people dead.

Kurt Westergaard drew a cartoon that depicted Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Last January, a Somali man wielding an ax and demanding “revenge” broke into Westergaard’s home. In 2009, Danish authorities arrested three men for planning to behead Westergaard.

Like Westergaard, Jyllands-Posten Editor Flemming Rose, who commissioned the cartoons, now has round-the-clock security. I asked via e-mail how many planned attacks against his paper and cartoonists have been thwarted.

Rose answered that this latest episode represents the sixth or seventh foiled attack.

In his new book, “Tyranny of Silence,” Rose explains that he asked cartoonists to submit works on Muhammad in order to stand up to “my perception of prevalent self-censorship among the Danish media” on the subject of radical Islam. Now he has a target on his back.

When we met in 2008, Rose summarized what summed up “The Cartoon Crisis.” “They are basically saying, ‘If you say we are violent, we are going to kill you.'”

And: “If you give in to intimidation, you will not get less intimidation, you will get more intimidation.”

Back to Molly Norris. In April, the one-time Seattle Weekly cartoonist made the mistake of drawing a cartoon that called for an “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.” Norris was reacting to Comedy Central’s decision to censor parts of the show “South Park” that depicted a cartoon Muhammad dressed in a bear suit — wink, wink — lest showing an image of the prophet offend. The network also bleeped out verbal references to Muhammad.

Cartoon Rage

Everyone Draw Mohammed Day! Facebook Page Crashed – NOW BACK UP!!

Islamization Watch

Shem: A Profit is born

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day: In defiance of violent intimidation and in support of the freedom of speech

Nick Gillespie over at the usually reliably dhimmi Reason magazine (thanks to Amy Alkon) articulates it well:

There comes a point in any society’s existence where it must ultimately, to paraphrase Martin Luther (who himself was more than happy to see opponents put to death), dig in its heels and say here we stand, we will do no other. We don’t need to be perfectly consistent philosophically or historically or theologically to assert what is special and unique not just about the United States, with its bizarre and wonderful articulation of the First Amendment, but the greater classical liberal project comprising not just the “West” (whatever that is) but human beings in whatever town, country, or planet they inhabit. And at the heart of the liberal project is ultimately a recognition that individuals, for no other reason than that they exist, have rights to continue to exist. Embedded in all that is the right to expression. No one has a right to an audience or even to a sympathetic hearing, much less an engaged audience. But no one should be beaten or killed or imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or praying to one god as opposed to the other or none at all or getting on with the small business of living their life in peaceful fashion. If we cannot or will not defend that principle with a full throat, then we deserve to choke on whatever jihadists of all stripes can force down our throats.

Pakistan, in fury over Draw Muhammad day, shuts down Facebook, YouTube

Profit unappreciated

Call to prayer

More from Islamization Watch more [Photos]

Everybody Draws Mohammed Day [Mark Steyn]

Veronique, I initially had mixed feelings about Everybody Draws Mohammed Day. Provocation for its own sake is one of the dreariest features of contemporary culture, but that’s not what this is about. Nick Gillespie’s post reminds us that the three most offensive of the “Danish cartoons” — including the one showing Mohammed as a pig —were not by any Jyllands-Posten cartoonists but were actually faked by Scandinavian imams for the purposes of stirring up outrage among Muslims. As Mr Gillespie says:

It is nothing less than amazing that holy men decrying the desecration of their religion would create such foul images, but there you have it. It is as if the pope created “Piss Christ” and then passed it off as the work of critics of Catholicism.

So, if it really is a sin to depict Mohammed, then these imams will be roasting in hell. (Unless, of course, taqqiya permits Muslims to break their own house rules for the purpose of sticking it to the infidels.)

But, that aside, the clerics’ action underlines what’s going on: the real provocateurs are the perpetually aggrieved and ever more aggressive Islamic bullies — emboldened by the silence of “moderate Muslims” and the preemptive capitulation of western media. I was among a small group of columnists in the Oval Office when President Bush, after running through selected highlights from a long list of Islamic discontents, concluded with an exasperated: “If it’s not the Crusades, it’s the cartoons.” That’d make a great bumper sticker: It encapsulsates both Islam’s inability to move on millennium-in millennium-out, plus the grievance-mongers’ utter lack of proportion.

I’m bored with death threats. And, as far as I’m concerned, if that’s your opening conversational gambit, then any obligation on my part to “cultural sensitivity” and “mutual respect” is over. The only way to stop this madness destroying our liberties is (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali puts it) to spread the risk. Everybody Draws Mohammed Day does just that. Various websites are offering prizes. I only wish we could track down those sicko Danish imams* who drew their prophet as a pig, and send them the trophy.

(*PS If I seem somewhat obsessed by this point, it’s because the Government of Alberta spent three years investigating my friend Ezra Levant for publishing the (authentic) Motoons, and, despite the cost to taxpayers, assigned a halfwit apparatchik to grill him about the cartoons who didn’t even know that what she called the three “worst” ones were fakes.)