He is a 28-year-old Somali with a regular residence permit in Denmark, but with close links with Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab and possibly al-Qaida militants in East Africa. He broke into Kurt Westergaard’s home armed with an ax and knife, shouting threats of “blood” and “revenge.” Yet, fortunately Westergaard and his granddaughter, who was in the home on a sleepover, succeeded in fleeing into a specifically created safe room. Westergaard is the Danish cartoonist whose 12 caricatures named “Faces of Muhammad,” published by Danish Jyllands-Posten, ignited riots and outrage across the Muslim world.
The Danish Muslim Union condemned the attack. They said in a statement: “We strongly distance ourselves from the attack, and any kind of extremism that leads to such acts.”
Here is what I had to say at the time about both the cartoons and the riots.
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ReplyDeleteHaven't we had enough of this hypocrisy?
ReplyDeleteThe Danish cartoons were clearly a sharp criticism of the perpetration of tyrannical repression and heinous crimes in the name of God one claims to worship. Thus blindly confident that one has God's blank cheque blessing, one can commit mass murder, individual assassination, mutilation, torture, rape, kidnapping, the decapitation or ransoming of hostages, Anything and everything goes. And this has been allowed to continue now since the late nineties.
But instead of condemning the blasphemous criminals who continue to give Islam such a bad name, the eminent authorities of Islam seem to prefer the facility of condemning those who are simply pointing this out. Pointing out what seems totally unjustifiable. There's not even any question of having gone beyond any limits of the freedom of the press. It could be considered a timely and justifiable criticism of what is highly criticisable, but in a light, yet not overly injudicious way.
It's also interesting to note, than instead of responsibly encouraging the respect of a democratic decision in a non Muslim, sovereign State, the Grand Mufti condemns the results of a public decision. How should this be interpreted? That despite the democratic choice of the majority, the minority should be allowed the right to impose its will? Such criticism from one of the most important clerical officials of Islam could be considered an incitement to anarchy.
Until the highest and most respected authorities of the Muslim religion unite (assuming they can agree) and stand up to make it publicly clear to the world that there is no connection whatsoever between Islam and terrorism, tyrannic repression, murder, etc., (assuming this is the case), then would it not be reasonable to suggest that they too are guilty of tacit complicity?
'Unite' and 'Islam' are mutually exclusive terms these days.
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