You mock our prophet, we burn your embassy...

[Lunatock]

To all appearances it seems like the militant few , are those who are setting the agenda.
The silent majority is either "silent" or ineffective!

It seems to be who the media is focused on. Just like they fixate apon those American Soldiers KIA in Iraq.

[Shek]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/S...703235,00.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rioting with well-planned spontaneity

Rory McCarthy in Beirut
Monday February 6, 2006
The Guardian


It was one of those unpredictable Lebanese Sunday mornings. The ski slopes in the mountains overlooking Beirut would have been crowded with skiers enjoying the brilliant winter sunshine. Walkers were out along the Corniche, strolling in designer tracksuits. Downtown, the chic restaurants were preparing for lunchtime. And there were a few men on scooters riding around town broadcasting an imminent protest.
It wasn't long before the heavily-laden coaches and minivans began to arrive from Beirut and the rest of Lebanon. They were all full of young, often bearded men who wore headbands and carried identical flags with calligraphic inscriptions in Arabic such as: "There is no god but God and Mohammad is his Prophet" and "O Nation of Muhammad, Wake Up."

There were soon as many as 20,000 of them filling the streets. They walked up past the Christian quarter of Gemmayze and into the even more genteel Christian area of Achrafieh, gathering not far from the Danish embassy, the target of their protest. One man waved a placard in English that said: "Damn your beliefs and your liberty." Another carried a sign saying: "Whoever insults Prophet Muhammad is to be killed."
The police seemed to know the demonstrators were coming and had turned out in force with barriers, barbed wire fences and several large fire trucks. Just a day earlier, the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus had been torched by a furious mob, repeating the violent protests that have spread across the world from Gaza to Afghanistan to London. On Saturday night, anticipating trouble, the Danish diplomatic staff in Beirut flew home.

The mob stood in the street, chanting their fierce condemnation of the Danish cartoons that spawned this rapidly-spreading crisis. By 11am, the Lebanese police and army were firing tear gas at the crowd. The protesters threw volleys of stones. Some stuffed cotton wool into their nostrils to stifle the effect of the gas.

One group overturned a car and set it alight. Sunni clerics in robes tried to calm the young men down. They were ignored. One cleric, Ibrahim Ibrahim, said his pleas were met with stones and insults. "They are hooligans," he said.

The mob grew fiercer, and finally the police withdrew. As they moved back, the crowd smashed their way into the building housing the Danish embassy and set it ablaze. From the burning building they hung a banner that read: "We are ready to sacrifice our children for you, O Prophet Muhammad." By now dozens of people had been wounded or arrested and at least one person was killed, a protester apparently caught up in the fire at the embassy building.

The many politicians representing Lebanon's fractured sectarian society sensed this was suddenly a situation a long way out of control. "It is the work of infiltrators," said Saiad Hariri, a prominent Sunni politician. "These acts have nothing to do with the Prophet. They are harming Muslims."

On the street, the riot began to take a more sectarian turn. Throwing the metal barriers and barbed wire aside they chased the police up into the narrow alleys of Achrafieh, well beyond the embassy and deep into the Christian quarter. They smashed dozens of parked cars and tossed bricks through the windows of the furniture boutiques and hair salons. Others overturned two police cars and threw rocks through the windows of the St Maron church.

"What is the guilt of the citizens of Achrafieh for caricatures published in Denmark?" said Charles Rizk, the justice minister and a Christian. "This sabotage should stop."

Asad Harmoush, a leader of Jamaía Islamiya, the conservative Sunni Muslim group that had helped organise the protest, tried to deflect the blame. "We can't control tens of thousands of people. We tried to limit the harm and we extend our excuses to our brothers in Achrafieh and to the security forces. There has to be an investigation. Obviously there were infiltrators."

And then in the early afternoon, as suddenly as it had all begun, it ended. The leaders of the mob turned to the angry young men beside them and told them it was time to leave. Obediently the crowd thinned out and began walking back to the buses, even as the Danish embassy continued to burn. By 3pm there wasn't a single protester left on the street. Later, the Lebanese interior minister, Hassan Sabei, announced his resignation.

The police returned in force, and with nothing to do they began taking photographs of each other in front of the burned-out building. Firemen hosed down the blaze. Crowds of Filipino maids returned from their day off back to their jobs in the homes of the wealthy, while the wealthy were out patching up their cars. Dozens of street sweepers hosed down the roads and collected the debris of the day.

[BenRoethig]

It's a cartoon. Who in their right mind expects mob violence from a cartoon?

There in lies the problem. They are so brainwashed by radical clerics that they don't think it a logicial, rational manner. They do whatever is "God's will" (I can tell you right now his will has nothing to do with murdering people) and of course the clerics are his spokespeople.

[Lunatock]

The same could have been argued for the Japanese. It matters more what those are controlling the masses think rather than the actual masses. Most will use the "I was jsut following the orders of my cleric" card. No offense to any muslims, but until there's a fatwa to ignore all further fatwas and think for yourself, I will be a little weary of Islam. It's far too easy for a cleric to abuse power.

Being weary of me would increase the chances you wouldn't attempt home invasion or walk out in front of me on a range then? ;)

[Lunatock]

Why am I not surprised? Sounds like a typical response from a Muslim who blames the West for everything that is wrong in their society and excuses the actions of their own.

Ehhhhhhhhh?! Um...the west is my society genius! American born & bred.

And how may I ask were you able to make that statement about the USMC stopping the flow of Jihadi's into Iraq seem anti-western to you?

We have Bluesman and Ray warning about the "silent few" and yet one of the "esteemed" members of WAB failed to heed it.

Rather than just trying to explain myself to you yet again and waste the time & effort..I shold just ban your ass for harassing a Moderator yet again.

[Lunatock]

It's a cartoon. Who in their right mind expects mob violence from a cartoon?

How about anyone who knows how violatile the region can be, and has enough street smarts not to incite 'em like that?

[Shek]

And how may I ask were you able to make that statement about the USMC stopping the flow of Jihadi's into Iraq seem anti-western to you?

I was wondering the same thing.

[Shek]

How about anyone who knows how violatile the region can be, and has enough street smarts not to incite 'em like that?

Was this published in any newspaper in the region?

[KPR]

How about anyone who knows how violatile the region can be, and has enough street smarts not to incite 'em like that?

It's a cartoon in Denmark.

The reaction of these people is akin to me publishing something in a local newspaper over here, and then having someone storm and burn my uncle's house over in Pennsylvania.

[Lunatock]

It's a cartoon in Denmark.

The reaction of these people is akin to me publishing something in a local newspaper over here, and then having someone storm and burn my uncle's house over in Pennsylvania.

It was a picture in a Denmark newspaper. Until the other European countries yelled "LOOK!" and copied them.

[Shek]

It was a picture in a Denmark newspaper. Until the other European countries yelled "LOOK!" and copied them.

But that still means that it wasn't published in the Middle East, the site of the burning embassies.

[InfiniteDreams]

How about anyone who knows how violatile the region can be, and has enough street smarts not to incite 'em like that?

That's a brilliant line of thinking. The fact that the region is volitale is their problem (it's been that way for hundreds of years). The dains or anyone for that matter shouldn't have to walk on egg shells editing their cartoons in their native country in fear preventing rioting in some other country. The mere fact that they can be incited to riot by a cartoon just proves how dangerous these 'many' are. I don't see why your trying to turn it around. The Bad guys are in the wrong and the Dains have nothing to apologize for. It's not their country yet the muslims want to impose their religious morals on every other non-islamic country. Denmark isn't an islamic country and if they want to make a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed they have every right to do just that.

The muslim fantatics should mind their own goddamn business and not worry so much about the toons in other countries. Some cleric gets wind of a cartoon printed in another country then goes and tells his followers to burn down their embassy. Muslims burn our flags and chant to death to US and Israel and what happens here...squat. And how about the signs they're carrying posted above. Those are very serious threats. And I bet you many of the people holding the signs don't even know what they mean. Very scary. You want to defend those to? It just goes to prove how crazy these guys are.

There is no tolerance and no freedom of expression with them. It seems to me the muslim leaders are scouring the globe to find a reason to incite rioting and thinking it will instill fear in the west. And with your view on the matter it's definately working, your allowing them bring their morals and ethics over here to the US out of fear it 'may provoke' them.

That's not the way to go IMHO.

[Gautam]

I just wonder what would have happened if few Whites in UK had done what these muslims did, I bet there would have been an uproar throughout the world.

Yet everyone is again busy pacifying the Muslims.

[Harry Flashman]

Errr... sir, that perception goes back to the crusades, if not earlier;Dantes's Inferno, Martin Luthers commentries etc, etc, etc, etc. Nothing the muslims could do would change that.

What perception are you talking about? Please clarify. The perception in the cartoon is of a religion that is extreme and violent to its core and is based on several years of extreme and violent behaviour. Muslims are the only people who can disprove that perception by countering the extremists who are currently defining it.

It took the holocaust for Europeans to actually change their opinions of Jews, this after one Jew; Disraeli had been PM of the United Kingdom. And no, I do not think a Holocaust would be a good idea.
And the issue is not the actual drawings, or that drawings actually were made, there are several in Muslim tradition (Iran for example) but the way in which they were made. Freedom of speech? A bomb in a turban? No, sir the cartoons were meant to be insulting and insult was taken, and for people not to expect insult to be taken in simply amazing.

The bomb in the turban cartoon is using Mohammed to symbolise Islam and the point its making is that Islam is seen as a violent, terroristic religion. The motivation isn't to insult Mohammed but to call attention to certain aspects of modern Islam. If the West had been suffering Christian terrorist attacks over the past years no doubt the cartoon would've been of Jesus in a suicide belt.

If the cartoonist wanted to personally insult Muslims do you really believe thats the worst he could've done? In all honesty I doubt that the he even realised how inflammatory a drawing of Mohammed could be. If you think that Europeans are familiar enough with Islam as to know that it could be, then I'm afraid you give us too much credit.

As for freedom of speech, next time you are in France, why don't you go to Verdun and say (as many do on this board) that "The French are cheese eating surrendering monkies". And tell me what happened, if you can!

I doubt they'd burn down my embassy and threaten to blow up commuters.

There are somethings that you know will outrage someone and for a good reason, and you don't say it (or say it tactfully) because you know what that reaction would be. THe Danes are free to publish their paper, but they should know what the reactions would be.

Absolutely. And the Muslim response so far has shown too many Europeans that the cartoons were correct.

A couple of years ago a British newspaper ran a cartoon of Ariel Sharon eating babies. Certainly not tactful as that has been a running image of Jews in Europe since at least the Middle Ages, and was one of the images that helped make the Holocaust and countless other massacres possible. There were a few demonstrations in London, harsh words were said between diplomats and that was about it. No embassies burnt down no threats of massacres and beheadings. Foreign papers didn't run the cartoon in solidarity against such threats. Instead, honour was satisfied, the paper learnt its lesson and the matter was closed.

Compare and contrast?

Islam has a much right to be angry at those cartoons as the papers have to print them. Burning down embassies and threating death and destruction isn't the way to get your point taken seriously though. As I'm sure you'd agree.

[Ray]

Not just us, did you ever take note that Islam is also at war with Russia, China, and India?

Colonel,

And other nations too!

Thailand and Philippines for starters.