Shouting (of course) "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." From Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims in Lebanon turned a religious ceremony on Thursday into a peaceful protest against a series of cartoons in the Western media lampooning the Prophet Mohammad....The leader of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group pledged no compromise until there was a full apology from Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared, and European countries passed laws prohibiting insults to the Prophet.
"Today, we are defending the dignity of our Prophet with a word, a demonstration but let (U.S. President) George Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to ... we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, told the crowd.
Not a clash of civilizations. One system-belief not against the West, but against all the rest. The clash of civilization, the world's civilization or civilizations, with one particular belief-system.
Sayyed:... and European countries passed laws prohibiting insults to the Prophet.
Why stop at Europe? The rest of the world needs these kinds of laws also. If they pass a law forbidding insulting Mohammad , is it still ok to insult Ali, or Abu Bakr? How about Hamza? I really like insulting that bugger and would hate to lose the right to do so.
And if Mohammad gets those laws, how about Jesus? Is refering to Jesus as a Prophet and not the Lord or son of God, an insult to him personally? And how about those apes and pigs...? They need protection too...
It looks as though this event is pushing Mohammad. to the front ahead of "allah" , as islam's true god.
Islam is making him in their image.
Islofob: I've been marvelling at the same thing--"Allah" is really the "third wheel" in all of this.
It points out one of the interesting properties of Islamic jurisprudence-- the law of transitivity. That is, if a implies b and b implies c, a implies c.
That struck to me when I read yesterday's item, "Cartoon Protesters Direct Anger at U.S.," but I couldn't think of a corroborating example at the time. This will do nicely.
See, they'll probably argue that worshipping Islam is worshipping Allah (somebody draw them a Venn diagram in the sand...) since Islam is the unerring word of Allah. And since Mohammed was "uswa hasana," the ideal Muslim, there's a continuum of equivalency that starts to hint at a "trinity" in an eyebrow-raising sort of way.
The fact that Allah is only involved in the cartoon uproar by that transitive property reinforces that notion.
And, there's one more step in the transitive chain that they won't admit to, though it's terribly obvious-- that of their narcissistic self-worship as Muslims, who can admit to no wrong and bear no insult.
Duh_swami-- if I weren't otherwise occupied, I'd go ahead and start "People for the Ethical Treatment of Apes and Pigs." ;)
Shinolite...thats a great idea. I may be able to take a few minutes out of my busy schedual of wild abandon and debauchery, to start such a group. There's few apes around here, but we have lots of pigs. I'm going to break out my books on hogology and study up on the subject. I better get started, so many bovines, so little time...thanx