Recently in Danish cartoons Category

Islamophobia Watch drew my attention to an article by Barbara Smoker, former president of the National Secular Society, in the latest edition of the Gay Humanist Quarterly. The edition is freely downloadable but is an image-based PDF, which means not only that I can't copy and paste it but also that if you are using a screen reader it might not pick it up. Clearly, the visually-impaired are one group whose inclusion they don't much care for, or perhaps they just don't know how to produce a decent PDF which isn't very difficult. Anyway, Barbara Smoker offers up the usual facetiousness which is typical of secularist attitudes to religious sensitivities, with a bit of ignorant bigotry any Jihad Watch or LGF goon could have come up with.

Yesterday there was another rally in London's Trafalgar Square: this time at the end of a so-called "March for Free Expression" at which a gaggle of people assembled to hear speeches defending people's right to insult others' religions. This rally had a rough ride from planning to fruition, and when it finally arrived in Trafalgar Square, the showing was really quite pathetic. Attendees were easily in three figures or, at most, the lower four (this picture shows this better than any of mine). I got there about 3pm, enough time to hear Keith Porteous Wood and a few others deliver interminable speeches. Being a veteran of quite a few anti-war rallies I'm used to hearing quick, punchy speeches even if they are full of cliches (I remember hearing the "war chest spent on a war" speech used in two separate rallies by, if I remember rightly, Jeremy Corbyn) and there are inappropriate speakers. To be honest I'm not sure how many of the attendees were really protesters and how many were observers. I know I was not the only observer, because this blogger was there too; he heard speakers I didn't because I was late. (More: here, here, here, here.)

Martin Sullivan at Islamophobia Watch notes that the organiser of the upcoming "March for Free Expression" has backtracked on his earlier enthusiasm for his followers to bring placards bearing copies of the Danish cartoons - and has removed the adverts for T-shirts with anti-Islam slogans from the site also. It's noted that some of his followers are a bit miffed:

"This is surely what the march is about. By restricting the free speech of the protestors you will play into the hands of Islamophobia Watch..." . "I'm hugely disappointed by this. You've done exactly what the censors want. I'm really not sure I'll bother coming along now, to be honest, and I'm guessing plenty of other people who have supported this campaign feel the same. I donated money to this campaign in good faith, and right now this feels like a betrayal of that faith. Will you be reimbursing people?" ... "I am incredibly disappointed by this – it is nothing but dhimmitude." ... "What a bunch of wimps. You have obviously caved in to the Islamic pressure groups and the Mayor of Londinistan. Another victory for Sharia law and another defeat for Liberty."

Sullivan predicts an appearance for the organiser, Peter Ridson, on Dhimmi Watch. Personally, I'm wondering what made him change his mind. (Update 25th March: the appearance on Dhimmi Watch has happened.)

Prospect Magazine (a British Lottery-funded left-leaning intellectual magazine) has published an exchange of letters between Prospect contributing editor Kamran Nazeer and Emel magazine editor Sarah Joseph (Should Muslim turn a blind eye to the cartoons?). As one might expect, Kamran Nazeer takes a basically "liberal" view and suggests that Muslims basically get used to the fact that no religion is sacrosanct in modern liberal society. Sarah Joseph points out that the cartoons came in a context of widespread vilification of Muslims in Danish political discourse, one example being a Danish MP likening Muslims to cancer, "which can only be treated with chemotherapy or surgically removed".

Umm Ibrahim has an insider's view on what happened at the "protests" in Beirut, in which the building housing the Danish embassy was torched by "fanatical Muslims". It seems that they were not fanatical enough to pray when the adhan was called ...

Inside Scoop on Protest of Danish Embassy in Lebanon @ The Imam's Daughter

(Hat tip: Izzy Mo.)

Another weekend, another Muslim demonstration in London regarding those wretched cartoons. What with rioting in Libya and now Nigeria and a KFC getting burned out in Pakistan, some people might not have expected a Muslim demonstration at which 10,000 people turned up to be as civilised as the one I attended this afternoon. The demo started in Trafalgar Square and finished at Hyde Park where the coaches awaited the demonstrators to take them back to their home towns. Unusually, the speeches were given first, at Trafalgar Square, and not at a rally in Hyde Park, as there wasn't one. (More: IslamicPolitik.)

In the absence of a proper post since Wednesday (work!), here's a link to Imam Zaid Shakir's as-ever (ma sha Allah) measured response to the cartoon affair:

Clash of the Uncivilized: Insights on the Cartoon Controversy

The current crisis shows the extent we Muslims are vulnerable to media manipulation, superficial shows of piety, and counterproductive one-upmanship militancy. If we start with the issue of media manipulation, it is clear that Western and Eastern media outlets played a large role in stirring up Muslim, and now Western sentiments. When the crisis initially broke in September, it was barely a blip on the media radar. Few outside of Denmark even knew of the cartoons. The Danish Muslim community, appropriately, by and large ignored the story. [1] It was only after a campaign undertaken by a delegation of Danish Muslim community activists to stimulate greater interest in the issue that the crisis reached the proportions we are currently witnessing. These activists traveled throughout the Muslim East trying to draw attention to the issue. When the issue was popularized by Iqra and other Arab satellite channels, and the cartoons were reprinted by several European papers, the crisis deepened. In light of that reality, it would be hard to deny the role the media has played in sparking and now perpetuating the crisis.

A peaceful protest is to be held this Saturday, regarding the cartoon affair, to counteract the yobbish antics of last Friday (hat tip: Osama):

Rally against incitement & Islamophobia, Saturday 11th February 2006

Date: 11th February 2006, 1pm-5pm, Trafalgar Square, London.

Full details here.

Ma sha Allah, it seems that one of the idiots who gave us all a bad name over the weekend has turned out to be a drug dealer who was out on licence at the time he dressed up as a suicide bomber and paraded for the cameras. They've recalled him to jail.

BBC NEWS | UK | Protester is returned to prison

Via Pickled Politics, it appears that Jyllands-Posten were selective about whose taboos they'd risk offending - they would portray the Prophet Muhammad (sall' Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam) as a vicious terrorist with a couple of bug-eyed veiled wives, but wouldn't like to offend their own Christian readership. Not that we want to see another of our prophets ('alaihim as-salaam) defamed, but the hypocrisy is obvious:

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

Now, if anyone has seen the cartoons they did print, they would realise that these cartoons were even more offensive and no more funny.

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

Admittedly, these were submitted unsolicited; the cartoons they published in September were actually commissioned. It seems that some people are willing to throw caution, and all their principles, to the wind to have a dig at the Muslims. (More: Svend White.)

This is an email I got from the New Muslims' Project email list, regarding the demo on Saturday:

assalaamu alaykum,

i was at saturday's demostration,

yes the stewards were HT [Hizb-ut-Tahreer],

almost all the banners and placards were HT, people were free to bring their own but HT had a big stack of them for people to take.

however i would say the vast majority of the people there were not HT, my local masjid organised a coach and not a single person is a HT member, we just realised the necessity of cooperating when doing something good and leaving well alone when they do something we disagree with.

there were also other brothers there from sheffield, mostly followers of sheikh nazim and definate non-HT.

everyone else seemed to be a mix, but i was disapointed actually that the HT's didnt get more people out if they have all this membership up and down the country.

assalaamu alaykum,

This afternoon, after jumu'ah, there was a demonstration outside the Danish embassy in Sloane Street, London, which was supposed to follow a march from the "Central Mosque" near Regent's Park. I got to the embassy around 2:15pm, to find a collection of what one might call "the usual suspects" outside the embassy: men in kefiyyehs, brandishing black and white flags, with hostile expressions on their faces and yelling stupid slogans. (They had women there as well, although they were markedly less noisy.) Having arrived from the Sloane Square direction, I decided on arrival that I was going over to the other side and joining the media. (Tags: Cartoons, Denmark, Jyllands-Posten, Islam. More: Pickled Politics, Opinionated Voice, IslamicPolitik.)

Twice this evening I've received text messages telling me to vote "no" in a text vote for BBC Radio 5 Live regarding whether the Danish cartoons should be published here. This vote actually finished at mid-day today, so if you get a copy, don't honour it or forward it. The BBC now know our position!

Vanessa Feltz, who has a phone-in show on the BBC's London radio station, has jumped in on the Danish cartoon controversy. The update is that several newspapers in Europe have published the cartoons in "solidarity" with JP, resulting in one of the editors, at France Soir, being sacked, and you can find the details of one of FS's cartoon there. I turned on in the middle of Feltz grilling Daud Abdullah over his objection to the cartoons and the idea of newspapers publishing them in the UK, which to their credit, none of them has. (More: avari-nameh.)

Speaking of orchestrated demonstrations and the like (see next entry down), did anyone get that impression of the demonstrations against the Danish cartoons that were shown on the TV last night?

I was planning a long post on the subject, but Safiyyah and Farah have said pretty much what I wanted to say. I have to say I've not received any text messages encouraging me to boycott Danish goods or send emails to the Danish government or the newspaper involved, but Farah reports that she's been inundated with them, one of them claiming that the cartoonist has been killed and the Danish government is keeping it quiet. (More: Umar Lee, Svend White, Izzy Mo, UZ, Harry's Place.)

The BBC is reporting that a Danish firm has taken out advertisements in various Middle Eastern newspapers to disassociate itself from the cartoons of the Prophet (sall' Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam), fearing that the bottom would drop out of its Arab markets:

BBC News: Danish firm seeks Muslim row end

Which goes to show that using the proper channels sometimes really does work. (A brother once told me that in this country, a company marketed trainers which had some sort of logo which bore resemblance to the name of Allah ta'ala, and a Muslim organisation bought out the entire supply on the condition that the company refrained from selling any more of them. Some idiot then tried to burn down the factory, and the company then flooded the market with them!)

A while ago there was a controversy in which British TV showed a documentary about the murder of a Saudi princess for some infraction of honour, and the Saudi government attempted to put pressure on the British government to get the TV station to pull the show. Of course, they told the Saudis that it couldn't be done, that it's not how things were done in this country. It seems that the Muslim governments have been putting pressure on the Danish government to do the same in response to a feature on pictures of the Prophet (sall' Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam). (Hat tip: Ginny.)