Cartoonifada 2006: The Unacceptable Consequences

The Vatican has since made statements, and the MSM has begun to cover events in Nigeria (note: now that the Christians have struck back), but this was my take as of yesterday......


I feel that I must at least attempt to shake readers back to reality before I delve deeper into this issue of the muslim outrage and unacceptable response to the now infamous "mohammad cartoons". The response on the part of the muslim world, especially in areas where there have been mounting death tolls, but also in the US where at least one muslim spokesperson has stated that, "free speech is not absolute", is not a response that we in the West can take seriously as a rational, civilized response to what were in reality simple cartoons. We must remember this, they were CARTOONS, people.

Now that I've made clear the triviality of the issue that has sparked these now deadly responses from Dar al Islam, I must insist that the responses that we have seen over the last few weeks are entirely unacceptable and must be condemned, and condemned without any caveats. Certainly with no caveats concerning our rights to freedom of expression and free speech. No religious figures deserve a pass here, and certainly not the founder of a religion whose numerous media continue to crank out rather blasphemous cartoons regarding other religions. I'd say that Mohammad is as fair game as anyone, and the fact that criticism of this "prophet" is usually followed up with a death threat should only further our outrage to this response. Step outside of the current situation for a moment and imagine that author Dan Brown was in hiding with a price on his head for what he wrote about Jesus and Christianity in his book The DaVinci Code. Point taken?

What I consider to be "unacceptable costs" in this current round of madness from the muslim "ummah" began with the protest signs themselves, as well as the obvious staging of the event. We now know that it took from the original publication of the cartoons in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September until February to see the organized response. We also know that this response was largely due to a tour of Middle Eastern countries by Palestinian/Danish Imam Abu Laban with a collection of cartoons that included several "fakes" that had never been published by any Danish or other European media outlets. Nevertheless, we suddenly saw protests, many quite violent, and protesters carrying signs obviously meant for the international media, as they were (regardless of the country where the protests were taking place) all printed out in English. This fact alone is curious enough. The fact that many of the slogans on these signs were of a violent and offensive nature was the debut, in my opinion, of the unacceptable response, as was the burning of embassies in some initial riots......

For more, see

What Would Charles Martel Do?