Category: The Dish

"What they [the bombers] did was good. They have warned that we are here, we Muslims. People have taken notice that we are here. They died so that people would take notice . . . big meetings and conferences make no change at all. With this, at least people‚Äôs ears have pricked up," – Ali, spiritual leader of the Al-Madina Masjid mosque in Tunstall Road, Beeston, where London’s 7/7 bombers had worshipped. Check out the full story for how Islamist terrorists receive backing from some mainstream clerics in Britain.

Its important to keep an eye on moments of Western abandonment of freedoms to accommodate Islamists and over-sensitive mainstream Muslims. An email from Denmark is a pretty good place to start:

"Here is an interesting bit of background that has been overlooked, but is a perfect example of the chill on freedom of ideas that is going on here.

On Oct. 4, 2004 (a month before Theo Van Gogh was murdered), a professor at Copenhagen University’s Middle East Studies program (the Carsten Niebuhr Institute) was lured into a car by 3 Arabic-speaking men. He was then verbally abused for reading aloud from the Koran in his classroom (with the reason given that he is a Jewish "infidel") and viciously beaten. As they threw him out of the car, his attackers threatened to murder him and his family if he went to the police.

In the aftermath, the university’s head of department gave the following telling account:

"We have members of Hizb ut-Tahrir (an extremist group that on its Danish website has advocated the murder of Jews "wherever they are found") that are trying to solicit new members. They never let themselves be known, but suddenly a poster will appear with a veiled incitement to kill Jews, or pamphlets will be pushed under someone’s door. We have apparently been subjected to a form of infiltration (…) So there are several reasons, independent of one another, that have made me change my opinion on the university as an open place, where all can come and go. The world has changed. Today, we simply have to know who we are letting in."

Translated from the Danish Wikipedia: The chairman of the Danish branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Fadi Abdullatif, was in 2003 sentenced to a 60-day suspended sentence for threats, aggravated harassment, and incitement to murder Jews (…) or distributing leaflets directed at Jews with the following quote from the Koran: "And kill them, wherever you find them, and drive them, wherefrom they drove you."

Yet, Denmark has continued to allow this group to operate, which shows how inclusive this country’s freedom of speech norms truly are."

The Danes allow murderous Islamist thugs to practice free speech, including the advocacy of murdering Jews, but are not allowed to publish cartoons revealing the extent of the intimidation – without consequences.

Norway’s Muslims demonstrate against non-Muslims’ right to portray images of Muhammad.

He was one of the "Super Best Friends" in a July 2001 episode. You can see the show here. Keep blasphemy alive! Here’s his picture, alongside, Jesus, Buddha, and David Blaine, among others.

The first photos … not exactly thrilling, but the notion that the president barely knew the most powerful Republican lobbyist in Washington is, well, silly.

They’ve published the cartoons on their site. Congrats, Bill.

So Fox won’t portray tame images of Muhammad, but they will broadcast "Passion of the Christ II: Crucify This." Here’s the full compendium of Jesus references on Family Guy. You wanna see Jesus turn water into "funk"? Enjoy. Keep sending in examples of media double-standards, and I’ll keep posting them.

Here’s a small account of something that happened almost forty years ago. It suggests that the rioting over cartoons is not simply a function of today’s more extremist Islam, but something integral to Islam itself.

For my Sunday Times readers, and anyone else who is interested, here’s another link to what Bill Clinton called the "totally outrageous" cartoons.

"Thursday, CNN broadcast a story on how common anti-Semitic caricatures are in the Arab press and illustrated it with ‚Äî you guessed it ‚Äî one virulently anti-Semitic cartoon after another. As the segment concluded, Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera and piously explained that while CNN had decided as a matter of policy not to broadcast any image of Muhammad, telling the story of anti-Semitism in the Arab press required showing those caricatures. He didn’t even blush," – Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times, today.

Rutten has a challenge to the mainstream media: will they avoid any images of the upcoming anti-Catholic movie, "The Da Vinci Code"? Of course, they won’t. And, I might add, I hope they won’t. Here’s a bleg to readers: please keep your eyes open for media representations of objects or images blasphemous to strict Christians and Jews. Last week, for example, the cartoon series, "Drawn Together," depicted Jesus refusing to extend compassion for one of the characters and eventually puking. Have you heard of it? South Park has Jesus as one its regular characters, and a recent South Park episode portrayed a statue of the Virgin Mary, with blood exploding out of her ass onto the face of the Pope. Yes, some people protested, but most Catholics and Jews understand that this kind of stuff is the price of freedom. Most Muslims – and I’m including the moderate ones here, as well – do not. It’s time for them to get over it. And it’s time for the media bigwigs to end their craven, fear-driven double-standards.