The Cartoon Intifada: We Have Won The Battle Of The Sacred Joke

I believe the Paris Riots (Paris Intifada) may have been a coordinated action, an organized battle against the forces of Western Civilization. Go to this page for an archive of my thoughts on this subject.

Tonight on Little Green Footballs, there is a post about the evidence supporting the idea that the Cartoon Intifada is also an organized effort:


It’s some time since I visited Palestine, so I may be out of date, but I don’t remember seeing many Danish flags on sale there. Not much demand, I suppose. I raise the question because, as soon as the row about the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten broke, angry Muslims popped up in Gaza City, and many other places, well supplied with Danish flags ready to burn. (In doing so, by the way, they offered a mortal insult to the most sacred symbol of my own religion, Christianity, since the Danish flag has a cross on it, but let that pass.)

Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look? The more you study this story of “spontaneous” Muslim rage, the odder it seems.

The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, it turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.

It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of “adding fuel to the flames”; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organised, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.


I believe Al Qaeda is sophisticated enough to have added crowd control to their repetoire. Hitler did it, and he is their mentor.

I agree with this guy that this was, likely, planned.

Our intelligence organizations ought to be looking into who the key crowd instigators are. This is a talent which requires study, and time to develop. It also requires intelligence, and a good amount of natural charisma. It should not be hard to figure out who is doing this.

Once you find out who they are, you just remove them from the population, through prison, or deportation.

By the way, I believe these kinds of efforts begin in coffee shops and other such meeting places. They then travel to the Mosques, once there are enough people within the Mosque to support the change in direction. The street riot, the burning of flags, the torching of embassies, the placards calling for murder, are the third stage.

The goal is to gradually radicalize enough of the Muslim population that a "spontaneous" riot can turn into a full-scale war.

Wretchard, at Belmont Club, believes the Eurabian Jihadis have overplayed their hand, and have, thus, woken up Europe, rather than enervating the Euros-appeasers:


The Danish cartoon crisis has managed to ignite what the Bush administration hoped to avoid from the beginning: turning the War on Terror into a War with Islam. Now an incident arising from a relatively obscure newspaper in Denmark has forced a choice between the most deeply held of all Western values, freedom of speech, with the cherished strategic goal of keeping the Muslim "street" aboard in the War on Terror.

The argument for regarding the Danish cartoons as a boon is premised on the belief that President Bush's attempt to separate the War on Terror from Islam was doomed to fail anyway; that it was better to face that question now than later.

According to this point of view, a view reinforced by the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, cultural and religious issues were at the root of international conflict. That mere voting -- in Palestine for example -- would never be sufficient to establish a liberal democracy for as long as the underlying culture remained hostile and aggressive to democracy's roots.

No one can foresee where the Danish cartoon controversy will lead. At best both sides will return to their lines of departure after having made their points, each with a renewed respect for the other. The West should understand, if it didn't realize it before, that Muslims are willing to fight for their religion.

And Muslims should understand, from the cartoon controversy, that whatever they had heard to the contrary it goes double ditto for the West.

And in the long run that grudging respect may make the the process of winning over the Muslim moderates easier than feigning the cheap and superficial attitude of multiculturalism. For who in Islam would believe in us if we did not believe in ourselves? Who in Islam could trust that we would fight at their side if we could not defend all that we were, all that we believed?


I agree with Wretchard. This battle has changed the landscape. The Paris Intifada was a victory for the Islamic Jihadis. The French do not like themselves enough to fight for their own streets. But, the French believe in their system (the French way, which is an outgrowth of Western Civilization) enough to fight for basic principles such as Freedom of Speech.

The most important statistic coming out of this battle is that EIGHT French newspapers published the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.

The French found their spine. It lies in their love of Western principles. Thank God, or, uh, whoever the French might like to thank.

Indeed, all of Europe has found its spine, as we have seen periodicals across the disputed territories of Eurabia publishing what the Jihadis consider to be blasphemy.

This battle has gone to the West. We have won. The Jihadis have succeeded in doing what even Hitler could not do; they have made the Euros, and particularly the French, fight for their principles.

Even if this one blows up in our faces, and people get killed, it will still be a victory for us. In fact, even more so. Because this is a battle we have found we are not willing to lose.

This is the hill we are willing to die on.