Recently in Muhammad cartoons Category

This report is skeletal in its level of detail. One will recall that according to this report and others in September, men "of Somali and Iraqi" origin were arrested, and a mosque raided, after an art center in Göteborg had to be evacuated of 400 people and the event, which Lars Vilks had said he might attend, had to be cancelled.

"Three charged in Sweden with conspiring to kill cartoonist," from Reuters, December 6:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three people have been charged with plotting to murder a Swedish cartoonist whose depiction of the Prophet Mohammad stirred Muslim outrage around the world, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said Tuesday.

Whose prophet?

Lars Vilks has been the subject of several death threats since his drawings were published in 2005. A Pennsylvania woman known as "Jihad Jane" pleaded guilty earlier this year to plotting to kill Vilks.

"The three people now charged at the Gothenburg District Court are suspected of conspiring to murder in September 2011 in Gothenburg," the prosecutor said in a statement.

The three are expected to appear in court later in December.

A society that accepts death as retribution for cartoons is morally, intellectually and ultimately materially impoverished. That is what is at stake in upholding freedom of speech against violent intimidation. An update on this story. "Norway charges three in terror plot over cartoons," from BBC News, September 27:

Prosecutors in Norway have charged three men with conspiracy to commit terrorism in connection with the 2005 Prophet Muhammad cartoon controversy.

The three are accused of planning to attack Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published his cartoons.

The men - of Iraqi Kurdish, Chinese Uighur and Uzbek origin - were arrested in Norway and Germany in 2010.

They had allegedly acquired bomb components and tried to buy a gun.

The three are expected to be tried next month.

They were named as Mikael Davud, a Norwegian of Uighur origin, Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd residing in Norway, and David Jakobsen, an Uzbek also living in Norway.

Curiously, terrorism charges against those who were arrested "were later changed to preparing murder [,] and the prosecutor said it related only to one individual." It is not entirely clear from the wording of that sentence whether the defendants were believed to be targeting only one person, or if only one of the three is to face the most severe charges.

However, one will recall that earlier reports focused on Muhammad cartoonist Lars Vilks as a possible target, and an arts center was evacuated on the night of an event Vilks had at one point stated that he would attend.

"Swedish security police raid mosque in Goteborg," from the Associated Press, September 18:

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden's security police raided the administrative office of a mosque in the country's second largest city , the force said on Sunday. Security police spokeswoman Sirpa Franzen said Thursday's raid against the Bellevue Mosque in Goteborg was prompted by prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnstrom, who heads the investigation against three men arrested on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Mosque officials weren't immediately available for comments.

Franzen declined to say if the raid was connected to the arrests and wouldn't give more details. The force only confirmed the operation, following a report in a GT tabloid.

The men, of Somali and Iraqi origin, were arrested as around 400 people were evacuated from an arts center and were initially suspected of plotting a terrorist attack. However, the charges were later changed to preparing murder and the prosecutor said it related only to one individual....

UPDATE 11:38 PDT: Now Will McCants has this: "'Helpers of Global Jihad' now says its claim is not the official claim and it had nothing to do w/ operation. Says wait for official claim."

------------------

It's Motoon Rage. From the Telegraph news feed:

18.03 Will McCants now says that Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami (Helpers of Global Jihad) seem to make a claim of responsibility. They claim it is in response to the occupation of Afghanistan and insults to the Prophet Mohammed. It has come via Shmukh, an elite jihadi forum.

McCants translates part of the message:

"We have warned since the Stockholm raid of more operations & we have demanded that the countries of Europe withdraw from the land of Afghanistan and end their war on Islam and Muslims. What you see is only the beginning and there is more to come."

And here is the full message, in my hasty translation:

Praise be to Allah from his slaves, united and humiliating the people of shirk [worship of others besides Allah] and companions of kufr [unbelief]. Prayers and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets, his family and companions and descendents.

The Almighty said: "Then fight in Allah's cause - Thou art held responsible only for thyself - and rouse the believers. It may be that Allah will restrain the fury of the Unbelievers; for Allah is the strongest in might and in punishment. [Qur'an 4:84]

Here another message from the militants has reached the countries of Europe and further proof for the countries of Europe that the mujahideen will not stand idly before their war against Islam and Muslims.

Today Norway has been targeted in order to be a lesson, and a lesson to the rest of Europe. We have warned since the Stockholm raid of more operations and we have demanded that European countries of Europe withdraw their armies from the land of Afghanistan and end their war on Islam and Muslims. We repeat our warning again to the countries of Europe and tell them that the demands of the mujahideen must be carried out. What you see is only the beginning. There will be more.

There were many reasons for the targeting of Norway. The most important is their participation in the occupation of Afghanistan and the abuse of our prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

Praise Allah who has enabled his slaves to be united...and pray to Allah to save our brothers and our fighters everywhere.

Glory and praise to Allah. I bear witness that there is no god but you and I repent to you.

Abu Suleiman Al-Nasser
Helpers of Global Jihad

A compromise with the prosecution, who wanted a whopping twelve years for Geele's axe-wielding home invasion. An update on this story. "Denmark stiffens sentence for cartoonist attacker," by Mette Fraende for Reuters, June 22:

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Danish appeals court Wednesday lengthened the prison sentence of a Somali man to 10 years from nine for attempting to kill a cartoonist whose 2005 drawing of the Prophet Mohammad provoked Muslim outrage.

Whose prophet?

Muhudiin Mohamed Geele broke into the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard with an axe on New Year's Day last year.

The 29-year old was sentenced to nine years imprisonment in February after he was found guilty of attempted terrorism, manslaughter and violence against a police officer.

But prosecutors appealed and asked for a 12-year sentence.

The court called the attack an attempt to frighten the population and destabilize society, and thus an act of terror.

I sentence you to Somalia:

Geele was also sentenced to be expelled and banned from Denmark for life after serving his sentence.

He had pleaded not guilty to the terror and manslaughter charges, but guilty to unlawful possession of a weapon and breaking and entering. He said he had entered the cartoonist's home intending only to frighten him.

Westergaard's drawing of the Prophet with a turban resembling a bomb was one of a dozen cartoons lampooning Islam published in 2005 by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, which led to violent protests in 2006.

Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam offensive....

So we've heard.

"Rana was also found guilty of providing material support to a plot to bomb a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad."

All together now: Whose prophet? An update on this story. "Tahawwur Rana convicted of aiding Mumbai attack group," from BBC News, June 9:

A US jury has convicted a Chicago businessman of supporting an Islamic militant group blamed for the Mumbai attack in 2008.

But Tahawwur Rana, 50, was cleared of the more serious charge of helping plot the attack that killed more that 160 people in the Indian city.

The Chicago jury also convicted the Pakistani-born Canadian of helping an aborted attack on a Danish newspaper.

Rana is expected to be sentenced later and faces up to 30 years in prison.

Correspondents say the trial gave a rare glimpse into the workings of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which said it carried out the Mumbai attack.

Star witness

The jurors at the federal court in Chicago reached their verdict on Thursday after two days of deliberations.

They found Rana guilty of providing material support to LeT.

But he was cleared of involvement in the Mumbai attack, in which 166 people died after group of militants stormed a train station, hotels, cafes and a Jewish centre, shooting and throwing bombs.

Rana was also found guilty of providing material support to a plot to bomb a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The plan was never carried out....

A doubly failed jihad: Not only did the bomb go off in his hotel bathroom, now he's going to jail. An update on this story. "Chechen-born boxer found guilty of terror for explosion in hotel in Danish capital," by Jan M. Olsen for the Associated Press, May 30 (thanks to Kenneth):

COPENHAGEN - A Chechen-born man was convicted of attempted terrorism Monday for accidentally setting off a letter bomb that investigators believe was intended for a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

Standard question: Whose prophet?

The Copenhagen City Court said Lors Doukayev, a one-legged amateur boxer, was trying to assemble the bomb when it went off in a hotel bathroom on Sept. 10 last year.

Allahu ak...dang!

Doukayev, a 25-year-old citizen and resident of Belgium, received cuts to his face in the explosion. No one else was injured.

Prosecutors said Doukayev, who pleaded innocent to terrorism, was preparing the bomb to target a Danish newspaper which sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries by printing 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. They believe his intention was for it to arrive on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

The court dismissed Doukayev's claim that he carried the explosives and a gun for personal protection and was trying dismantle the bomb when it went off. He was also found guilty of unlawful weapons possession.

The device was filled with steel pellets and contained triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, which terrorists used in bombs that killed 52 people in London in 2005.

Wearing headphones, Doukayev listened quietly as the verdict was read and translated into French. He then smiled and waved to the interpreter.

Doukayev's defence lawyer, Niels Anker Rasmussen, said he was surprised by the verdict, but had not decided yet whether to appeal. A sentencing hearing was scheduled for Tuesday.

Investigators initially had difficulty determining Doukayev's identity, saying he used three different names in his travel documents, and had even scratched the serial number off his prosthetic right leg.

Somehow "David Headley," nee Dawood Gilani, got the idea that massacring people would get him rewards from Allah. It is a pity that all the Islamic spokesmen in the West who assure us that this is a Misunderstanding of Islam spend all their time trying to silence the non-Muslims who dare to point out that some Muslims believe that, instead of trying to explain the true understanding of the Religion of Peace™ to these misguided Muslims.

"Mumbai massacre terrorist tells court of second scheme to hit Danish newspaper," by Colin Freeze for the Globe and Mail, May 27 (thanks to Karl):

Not long after his schemes led to the deaths of more than 160 people in Mumbai in 2008, David Headley had a dream.

It was early 2009 and he envisioned the Prophet Mohammed’s tomb, with his own final resting place “not next to the prophet’s grave itself, but a little distance away.”

Mr. Headley, now 50, concluded that his vision meant great heavenly rewards awaited him – if he were successful in a new attack. The plan?

Get gunmen to shoot up the Denmark offices of Jyllands Posten, so that he could avenge Islam against the newspaper that affronted God’s messenger with a cartoon.

So testified Mr. Headley in a Chicago court Thursday, where the 50-year-old convicted terrorist is giving evidence against a peripheral player, Tahawwur Rana, to save himself from the death penalty....

Motoon Rage from a U.S.-based Misunderstander of Islam. "Muslim convert charged with threats to 'South Park' creators," from CNN, May 20 (thanks to Charles):

(CNN) -- Federal authorities are using words uttered by the co-founder of a radical Islamic group to charge him with threats against the creators of "South Park."

A criminal complaint alleging the communication of threats was filed in Virginia late last week against Jesse Curtis Morton, also known as Younus Abdullah Mohammad.

A senior law enforcement source Thursday told CNN, which interviewed Morton in 2009, that the suspect is believed to be in Morocco, where he maintains Islampolicy.com, an English-language website propagating pro al Qaeda views.

That website is a successor to Revolutionmuslim.com.

Morton, a former resident of Brooklyn, New York, is the second person charged in the "South Park" case....

In an affidavit accompanying the recent complaint against Morton, FBI special agent Paula R. Menges said Morton, co-founder of the group called Revolution Muslim, worked with Chesser on a "clarification statement" after Chesser's postings. The pair made website postings that were -- despite their claims -- threats, Menges said.

The agent also contends the statement contained pages of justification under Islamic law for the death of those who insult Islam or defame its prophet.

Revolution Muslim's 2008 co-founders, Yousef al-Khattab and Morton, were both interviewed by CNN's Drew Griffin in October 2009. In the interview Morton, a convert to Islam and one-time follower of the Grateful Dead, defended the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and argued that further attacks on Americans were justified....

"We're commanded to terrorize the disbelievers," Morton told Griffin. "The Quran says very clearly in the Arabic language ... this means 'terrorize them.' It's a command from Allah."

Indeed. "Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies..." -- Qur'an 8:60

Morton said he did not define terrorism as killing innocent civilians. "I define terrorism as making them fearful, so that they think twice before they go rape your mother or kill your brother or go into your land and try to steal your resources."...

Morton in 2009 told CNN that "Americans will always be a target -- and a legitimate target -- until America changes its nature in the international arena."

Note that Morton ceased to consider himself an American when he converted to Islam. Because Islam considers itself to be a political entity, not solely a religious one.

Westergaard is no hero of free speech: he has successfully sued Anders Gravers of our sister organization, Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE), for unauthorized use of his Muhammad cartoon in a demonstration. Clearly he hasn't the first foggiest idea of why his cartoon is important, or of what the reaction to it -- including this story -- tells the world about Islam and Islamic supremacism. Nonetheless, Western authorities should be protecting him from this Jordanian action, and from jihadist vigilantes who want to execute sentence on Westergaard themselves.

"Jordan to try Danish artist over Mohammed cartoon," from AFP, April 14 (thanks to Paul):

AMMAN — A Jordanian court will begin this month the trial of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard over a controversial caricature of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, but it was unclear if he will attend.

Zakarya Sheikh, spokesman for a group of local media outlets that sued Westergaard in 2008 for depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, said on Thursday the artist and others have been summoned by a magistrates' court in Amman to stand trial on April 25."

A copy of the subpoena obtained by AFP says Westergaard "is accused of the crime of blasphemy."

"These legal measures seek to prevent attempts to insult Islam and incite racial hatred against Muslims worldwide, particularly in Europe," Sheikh told AFP....

What race is Islam again? In any case, Sheikh is at least refreshingly honest: these legal measures are designed to stifle free speech about Islam in the West, and to force the West to adopt Sharia blasphemy provisions.

Westergaard, meanwhile, remains clueless:

He has been quoted in local news reports as saying that he "would like to go to Amman to stand trial. However, what I fear is that I am convicted in advance."

"I wanted to depict the terrorists as if they were taking the Prophet Mohammed as a hostage. I have no problem with Islam but with the terrorists," he said, insisting that he respects Islam but "will not apologise."

MPs have demanded that the government sever ties with Denmark, and Amman has condemned the caricature, warning that it could spark further extremism and harm relations between Denmark and Muslim countries.

If it sparks further "extremism," no one is to blame but the "extremists," and Western authorities should be telling Amman that.

There's a paradox buried deep within Western liberal attitudes toward Muslims, and it helps explain the otherwise incomprehensible behavior that multiculturalists exhibit when confronted with arguments, evidence, and finally proof that Islam is an aggressive ideology on the march. It will take a little digging, and several points of comparison, for me to uncover, but once I've done so, I hope my thoughts will help the reader deal more productively with the kind of people who are outraged by foolish stunts like Koran-burning, but blithely indifferent to suicide bombing, blasphemy laws, and the death penalty for escapees from Islam. To understand all is not to forgive all, but it can help build a bridge, across which we might be able to coax the occasional dupe back over to sanity.

In his New Republic review of That’s Offensive! Criticism, Identity, Respect, by Stefan Collini, Isaac Chotiner analyzes why it's considered essential in “enlightened” Western circles to avoid offending Muslims, but perfectly acceptable to outrage Christians. In the course of recommending the book, Chotiner writes:

Collini begins by defining “offense.” From a dictionary entry, he writes that the taking of offense is often seen as intensely related to one’s feelings. This may suggest, he writes, “that if someone does not feel offended, they have not been offended. And this may in turn seem to entail the reverse proposition, namely that each individual is the only possible judge of whether or not they have been offended.” For claims of offense to be given respect, however, an objective standard needs to have been violated by the offender. No one, for example, is offended by people who snore in their sleep. We might find them annoying, but they do not offend us. Nor is sympathy always granted to those who claim to have taken offense. To say of someone that they “do not easily take offence” is to compliment them, Collini notes. The bar, in other words, is higher than it could be.

Collini is also aware that in many societies today, free speech is highly valued, even at the cost of offense. “If we confine ourselves to the traditional form of the debate about ‘free speech,’ it is not difficult for those of a liberal disposition that the rights of criticism should be guaranteed in any tolerably open society, even when the activity risks giving offence to some of those being criticized.” And yet Collini sees the outlines of a problem: “Those who think of themselves as committed to ‘progressive’ moral and political causes have come to believe that two of the central requirements of an enlightened global politics are, first, treating all other people with equal respect and, second, trying to avoid words or deeds which threaten to compound existing disadvantages.”

Treating people with respect is a fine goal, but Collini notices that respect tends to be shown with special deference to so-called “out groups.” Claims of offense that would otherwise be ignored are instead given credence and even deference. Collini also correctly identifies the people who tend to fall into this trap. Very few “progressive” forces, for example, would have shown any “understanding” of hurt Christian feelings if Jesus had been mocked in a Danish newspaper. The entire force of the argument against the offensiveness of the Danish cartoons was based on the concern that Muslims were somehow less powerful than other religious believers. But this hardly qualifies as an adequate justification for a double standard.

To put things more concretely, a native Upper East-Sider in New York City enrolled at Columbia University cements his psychological sense that he belongs in the top 2% of American (and hence of world) society by attending lectures by visiting Palestinian terrorists. If on the way out he sees a “Bridge and Tunnel” construction worker waving a flag and holding a sign, that undergrad sneers disdainfully at the “Islamophobe” in exactly the same way he might at a painting by Thomas Kincaid, or a gathering of (white!) Pentecostalists singing hymns. Should that same undergrad—perhaps in search of really good hummus in the Arab section of Park Slope, Brooklyn—stumble into a mosque, he would never, never admit to having similar feelings of scorn for the open religiosity he'd witness there. For one thing, he'd get a frisson from how “exotic” the whole thing was. More importantly, if he permitted himself to admit to a feeling of cultural superiority, by that very act he would be lowering his own social status. He might as well toss out that jacket he bought at Barney's and put on a Walmart vest, then go home and crack a Coors lite while watching Glenn Beck.

There's another, darker side to the equation—the envy elite liberals feel of the very minorities they claim to succour. George Gilder had the cojones to point this out in his classic Men and Marriage. He wrote at length of the many ways in which feminism had truncated, quashed, and make disgraceful many of the traditional attributes of masculinity among men: Aggression, stoicism, physical courage, pride in one's name, patriotism, adherence to inherited tradition—all of these became stigmatized as toxic secretions of the “patriarchy,” and elite men who wished to mate with elite women learned to shed them. It's as if on some secluded island all the peahens “decided” they despised their cock's flashy tails, and in order to reproduce, those peacocks had to pull out all their own feathers.

However, when upper-crust liberals (I include here elite nonwhites such as Barack Obama, who had to take lessons, as he admits, in how to “walk black”) look at minority groups, they find that masculinity remains respectable there. All the attributes that would get you shunned on Morningside Heights are on proud display in the ghetto ten blocks north, and the SAT athletes who feel deprived of them can get a “fix” by blasting gansta rap in their iPods, or indulging in revolutionary politics. Likewise, I'd argue, liberals can live vicariously through Muslims—their “pride,” their group cohesiveness, their dogmatic certitudes and their truculent aggression.

Thus pro-Muslim liberals can at once retain their attributes of upper-class status by showing their generosity to the weak and distinguishing themselves from low-status “xenophobes,” while indulging at one remove the game-cock self-assurance, macho pride, and truculence of Muslims. It's really quite an impressive psychological adaptation our elites have made to the almost impossible mating conditions set for Western males, and I'm tempted to admire it. But I can't help looking at the bloody stubs where their tails used to be and feeling a twinge of sadness. No, make that contempt.

There—I've given the game away, and climbed down several notches in the social hierarchy. I shall turn in my collegiate tie for a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt. No peahen nookie for me.

Throwing her life away to register her disapproval of a cartoon. An update on this story. "‘Jihad Jane’ conspirator to plead guilty: lawyer," by John Shiffman for the Philadephia Inquirer, March 4:

A Colorado woman will plead guilty in federal court in Philadelphia on Tuesday to a count of providing material aid to terrorists, her lawyer said Thursday.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Leadville was charged in the same indictment as Colleen LaRose, the Pennsburg woman known as Jihad Jane.

LaRose pleaded guilty last month to participating in a plot to kill a Swedish artist who offended some Muslims by drawing a picture of Muhammad with the body of a dog. E-mails LaRose apparently sent show that she offered to use her identity - blond hair, Western face, and U.S. passport - to help extremists in Europe.

U.S. counterterrorism officials have called LaRose's 2009 arrest evidence of a new and alarming threat - an American-born woman's joining an Islamic terrorist conspiracy.

LaRose and Paulin-Ramirez began e-mailing each other in August 2009. According to the indictment, LaRose wrote that she was moving to Europe "to join the brothers and sisters," and Paulin-Ramirez responded, "I would love to go over there."

The women first met a month later, when, the government alleges, they arrived in Ireland to meet up with terrorists. As part of the plot, prosecutors said, Paulin-Ramirez married a co-conspirator the day she arrived in Ireland, a man she had never met....

The court also ruled that Mohammed Geele should be expelled from Denmark after serving his sentence. An update on this story. Being sentenced to life in Somalia is easily the harsher part of the punishment. "Somali sentenced to 9 years for axe attack against Danish cartoonist; defence launches appeal," by Jan M. Olsen for the Associated Press, February 4:

COPENHAGEN - A Somali man convicted of terrorism for breaking into the home of a Danish cartoonist who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison.

Whose prophet?

The Aarhus city court ruled that Muhideen Mohammed Geelle should be expelled from Denmark after serving his sentence.

Defence lawyer Niels Christian Strauss told The Associated Press he had launched an appeal against the conviction and sentence.

The 29-year-old entered cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's home armed with an axe on New Year's Day 2010. Westergaard locked himself inside a panic room and was unharmed. Police arrived and shot Geelle in the leg.

The court on Thursday found Geelle guilty of terrorism.

Strauss said he had appealed as the attack was not an act of terror, as his client had no intention of physically harming Westergaard.

Geelle had testified that he did not want to kill Westergaard, he just wanted to scare him and broke into his home after reading on the Internet that the 75-year-old Dane "was proud of the drawing and wanted to do more."

Westergaard's drawing was one of 12 cartoons of Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper in September 2005, triggering violent protests across the Muslim world four months later.

The prosecution, however, said Geelle had intended to kill Westergaard and that the crime should be viewed as terrorism as it was meant to "seriously frighten the population" and destabilize Denmark. It did not, however, link Geelle to any terror group.

The court also found Geelle guilty of assaulting a police officer, but acquitted him of a charge of attempted murder for throwing the axe at police when they confronted him on arrival at Westergaard's home in Aarhus, northwestern Denmark.

No date has been set for the appeal.

The jury didn't buy Mohamed Geele's claims that "I was irritated and frustrated by his comments. I wanted to frighten him but not to kill him."

"I thought to myself: Now it's happening," Westergaard recalled.

He heard his then 6-year-old granddaughter Stephanie scream from the living room, as the axe-wielding attacker tried to break down the door of the panic room.

"Then the longest minutes of my life started," Westergaard said. "He hammered the axe against the door and I wondered whether the door would resist. Would he leave Stephanie unharmed?"

All for a cartoon. And while the spotlight has been on Westergaard, there is no telling what impact the incident has had on his granddaughter. But prosecutors are only seeking 12 years for Geele. "Jury convicts Danish cartoonist's attacker," from CNN, February 3:

(CNN) -- A 29-year-old Somali man was found guilty Thursday of attacking a Danish political cartoonist known for his drawing of the Muslim prophet Mohammed with a turban shaped as a bomb, authorities said.

"The Muslim prophet Muhammad." It's refreshing not to have to ask "Whose prophet?" for a change.

In a unanimous verdict, Mohamed Geele was found guilty of attempted terrorism, attempted manslaughter and attacking a police officer with a knife and an ax, said Danish Prosecutor Lene Lemt.

Geele was accused of trying to break into the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard on January 1, 2010. He was shot in the right leg and left hand by an officer during the incident and hospitalized for his wounds.

At the time, Danish intelligence officials had linked him to an East African Islamist militia allied with al Qaeda.

Prosecutors are seeking 12 years in prison for Geele, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.

Al-Shabaab, the militant organization with alleged ties to Geele, is waging a bloody battle against Somalia's transitional government and is currently on a U.S. government list of terrorist organizations.

At a January 2010 news conference in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said, "We are very happy with the Somali national who attacked the house of the Danish cartoonist who previously insulted our prophet Mohammed. This is an honor for the Somali people. We are telling that we are glad that anyone who insults Islam should be attacked wherever they are."...

This convert to and Misunderstander of Islam said of her attempt to murder Muhammad cartoonist Lars Vilks: "I will make this my goal till I achieve it or die trying."

Murder for a cartoon. For Allah.

"Pennsylvania woman known as 'Jihad Jane' to plead guilty to terror conspiracy," from Newscore, January 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

PHILADELPHIA -- A Pennsylvania woman, nicknamed "Jihad Jane," who pleaded not guilty to four terror conspiracy charges back in March 2010, is expected to change her plea, CNN reported Friday.

Colleen LaRose's attorney told CNN that she will change her plea to guilty to charges that she conspired to support terrorists and kill a person in a foreign country.

LaRose, 47, was arrested in 2009 for trying to recruit Islamic fighters and for plotting to assassinate a Swedish artist who poked fun at the Prophet Muhammad.

The federal indictment claims that LaRose, who hails from suburban Pennsburg, Pa., grew obsessed with Islamic radicals online and, using the screen names "Jihad Jane" and "Fatima Rose," agreed to raise funds for them as well as to assist them with recruiting others.

Prosecutors say she managed to recruit at least one person, a single mother named Jamie Paulin-Ramirez from Leadville, Colo. She eventually moved to Ireland with her young son and married a terror suspect from Algeria. She is in custody and had pleaded not guilty to terror-related charges.

LaRose is also accused of making false statements to government officials and for stealing a passport that she intended to give to an Islamic fighter.

Prosecutors say that LaRose responded to instructions to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks, who had drawn the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog, by saying, "I will make this my goal till I achieve it or die trying."...

One of my favorite books as a child was a collection of the tales of Uncle Remus, which anti-slavery activist Joel Chandler Harris gathered from slaves across the South. And we all know the most famous story in that collection: Bre'r Rabbit and the Tar Baby. It's one of the few where Bre'r Rabbit doesn't come out on top. In most of the stories, he outwits and humiliates the aggressive Bre'r Fox, who aspires to eat him. In this one, however, Bre'r Fox sets a trap for the cocky rabbit in the form of a carefully crafted, human-looking ball of tar complete with coat, hat and pipe. When the Tar Baby won't give Bre'r Rabbit a friendly greeting, Bre'r Rabbit punches him. Unable to free himself, he punches again, then kicks, and finally head-butts this dissenter from Southern good manners, until at last he's entirely encased in sticky tar. This tale has ever since served as a metaphor for no-win conflicts you want to avoid, which if engaged will prove interminable--like our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and our useless "alliance" with Pakistan.

Well tonight I feel like I'm staring at my very own Tar Baby in the form of an Islamic comic book. Or, to be more precise, of the Muslim sidekick, Nightrunner, who will soon join Batman in DC Comics. Why is this a battle I'd rather not pick? Because it's too easy to come off sounding both sinister and silly. That was certainly how Omar Karmi of The National portrayed critics of the new Muslim character:

It would be hard to find a more boilerplate superhero. Nightrunner, the latest hero to join the ranks of DC Comic's stable of characters, was brought up on the mean streets of Paris and is an outstanding practitioner of the daredevil urban gymnastics called parkour.

He managed to stay out of trouble because of a keen sense of justice instilled in him by his devout mother, and was recruited to join Batman Inc, a gobal crimefighting network established by the original Batman, Bruce Wayne.

So why is this fairly typical fictional superhero causing a furore in the real world? He is a Muslim, of Algerian descent to be precise, and that has some people in the US, notably right-wing bloggers, in a tizzy.

While an argument over the religion and ethnicity of a comic book character might seem like something of a tempest in a teapot, observers say it is part of a broader pattern of growing anti-Islamic sentiment in the US.

As we see, even addressing such a topic can make you sound petty and paranoid, like the Rev. Jerry Falwell accusing a Teletubby of sodomy. It's tempting not even to address the question, lest you seem ridiculous. But let's turn it around for a minute.

Whenever a pop culture institution makes a concession to the cultural Left, it is invariably and shamelessly trumpeted in the media as a sign of "progress" toward "inclusiveness" and "tolerance." The creation of The 99, a team of Muslim superheroes embodying attributes of the 99 names of Allah, by Dutch comic publisher Endemol, was lauded by no less than the Times of London for "counter[ing] the effects of jihadist agitprop on Muslim minds." (If a comic book series could indeed cancel out the Qur'anic injunctions to oppress unbelievers, I would be lauding it myself--indeed, I'd happily be passing out copies in Arab neighborhoods.)

So it's acceptable to take seriously comic books, or plush animals on children's TV, as long as they are fostering multiculturalist goals. At such moments, there is no question that pop culture is important. But let someone on the other side agree, "Yes, pop culture matters--which is why I deplore this development," and he comes off as a kook. It's a tactic, and a fairly effective one.

I'm not one to lose much sleep over comic books, but I do find Nightrunner disquieting-- as I found the Christian imagery in the Spiderman movies uplifting. Most of the time, in American popular culture, religion is ignored, or used as backstory (for instance, when Mafia dons meet at the Feast of San Gennaro). When mass culture treats my religion as something important, real, and worthy of respect, I take it as an affirmation that I have a place in the mainstream. And that is why producers of comic books like Nightrunner are including Muslim characters, to foster the mainstreaming of Islam.

I wouldn't object so much if the playing field were level. It's common for films and TV skits to make fun of (white) Evangelical preachers, of Catholic priests, and of Jewish rabbis--because these groups have mostly learned how to take a joke, without firebombing newspaper offices or hunting down cartoonists as if they were war criminals.

It's obvious that people don't feel equally free to mock Islam, and it's obvious why: the fear of mayhem. The reason Muslims react with savage violence to portrayals of Muhammad is simply because it works--it puts the world on notice that as a community they are a fearful and implacable force, whose demands must be accommodated. Given that is indeed the case, and that this attitude has deep roots in the very doctrines of Islam, it's not a religion anyone should wish to see mainstreamed, any more than we'd want the Aryan Nations or Scientology accepted into the pantheon of "respectable" faiths.

What's worse is that Nightrunner betrays the spirit of Batman. Bruce Wayne is a millionaire whose parents were murdered by bandits, who devotes his wealth to fighting crime and injustice--while keeping his identity utterly secret, averse as he is to public adulation. Could there be a figure more opposite to Muhammad? Indeed, if comic book writers are so desperate to include a Muslim character in Batman, let me make a suggestion:

Cast Muhammad himself as one of Batman's supervillain opponents. He could be called The Prophet. A native of Gotham City (e.g. Mecca), he started out running for mayor--convinced that his private vision would bring justice and peace to the city. When he failed, and was run out of town on a rail, he brought his followers with him to a neighboring town that had fallen into chaos (e.g., Medina), with the promise that he could restore tranquility. Instead, he seizes absolute power. His "visions" begin to change, their content gradually serving to feed his ambition and lust for pleasure. Soon, the very people who brought him in to keep the peace are forced to obey him slavishly or flee the city. And now he's looking hungrily at Gotham City, sending his henchmen to conduct audacious raids against its commerce, and raising a private army intended to conquer his old home town and make it his super-secret base for conquering the world....

Now that's a comic book I'd really like to see. I hope some brave, anonymous soul sees fit to create it.

There are no heroes in this story. The egregiously short-sighted and self-serving Westergaard won a 100,000-Danish-kroner judgment against Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) for the implied use of his Muhammad cartoon during a protest, and threatened to sue Geert Wilders for his use of the Motoon in the film Fitna. The Danish judge, meanwhile, appears to be woefully clueless and politically correct. "Judge censures cartoonist over court outburst against 'terrorist attacker,'" by Roger Boyes in The Times (via The Australian), January 21 (thanks to Paul):

A Danish judge has had to call the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard to order after an outburst against the man who is accused of trying to kill him.

"He's just a cowardly liar, a terrorist!" exclaimed the 75-year-old, who has drawn the wrath of the Muslim world for his caricature of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban that resembled a bomb.

The accused man, a care worker of Somali origin, broke into the cartoonist's home a year ago, wielding an axe. On Wednesday, at the outset of the trial, Mohammed Geele, 29, said that he had used the axe to enter the house and that his aim was to frighten Mr Westergaard and express his anger about the cartoon.

Mr Westergaard rejected his version. "He was like a religious insane young man," he told the court in Aarhus yesterday. "I believe he entered the house as a holy warrior who wanted to kill an infidel." He turned to look at his assailant - the first time that they had actually seen each other.

When he heard Mr Geele smashing his way through the bulletproof glass of the terrace door, Mr Westergaard dashed to the bathroom, where he has had a steel door installed since receiving death threats from the Muslim world. From there he called the police on his mobile phone. A recording of the attack captures the noise of the axe battering the door.

Mr Westergaard said he had followed police instructions by heading for the panic room without grabbing his 5-year-old granddaughter who was cowering on the sofa. He has been criticised in Denmark but recorded testimony of the girl, beamed into the courtroom, showed no obvious distress.

That doesn't make his craven selfish cowardice any more excusable.

"The man was hammering on the door, bam, bam, bam," she said on the video, recorded the day after the attack on New Year's Day last year. "And then came the di-da-di-da of the sirens. I knew the police were coming."

It took eight minutes for the police to arrive. When Mr Geele raised his axe at them outside the house they sprayed him with pepper and shot him in the knee.

Crucially, yesterday's testimony from the police revealed that he had shouted "Allah is great" several times before he fell to the ground. The prosecution is interpreting this as further evidence that he was inspired by terrorist goals. He is accused of a terrorist act along with attempted murder.

The judge reprimanded Mr Westergaard for prejudging him by calling Mr Geele a terrorist. The prosecution has so far failed to establish a clear terrorist motive.

Plain idiocy. By Islamic standards, Westergaard blasphemed. The penalty for blasphemy in Islamic law is death. Geele clearly meant to enforce that penalty. Is this "terrorism"? It depends upon how one defines the word. But it certainly is jihad -- a concept that no Western government has yet realized or may ever realize constitutes a threat to free people.

Much has been made of why MrGeele shaved his whole body and covered himself with oils before travelling to Mr Westergaard's home, suggesting that he had prepared himself for a martyr's death with a ritual cleansing.

Mr Geele shrugged off the suggestion, saying that it was natural for a Muslim to keep clean.

Yes, people regularly shave their whole bodies in order to keep clean.

The question remains whether the attacker, a father of four and an apparently well-integrated Dane, was acting out of anger, or was part of a wider terrorist mission.

He was acting out of Islamic principles regarding blasphemy against Muhammad. Is that a "wider terrorist mission"? Certainly there are many, many other Muslims worldwide pursuing the same mission, whether or not Geele had any institutional connection to any of them.

Kurt Westergaard is an ironic and unfit poster child for the freedom of speech: he has pursued legal action against anti-jihadists who have republished his cartoon of Muhammad, and has never demonstrated any awareness of the larger issues at stake in the attempts to murder him and suppress his cartoon. That does not mean, of course, that Mohamed Geele should not be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and the freedom of speech of Westergaard defended -- in spite of Westergaard himself. And "moderate Muslims" in the West should explain exactly how Geele is misunderstanding the religion that he explicitly invokes as his motivation -- but they won't, of course.

Geele says he didn't intend to kill Westergaard, which makes this a War Is Deceit Update: "Somali attacker 'only aimed to scare Danish cartoonist,'" by Slim Allagui for AFP, January 19 (thanks to Block Ness):

AARHUS, Denmark (AFP) - A Somali man charged with trying to kill a Dane who caricatured the Prophet Mohammed pleaded not guilty to attempted murder on the first day of his trial Wednesday, insisting he had only aimed to scare the cartoonist.

"I was irritated and frustrated by his comments. I wanted to frighten him but not to kill him," Mohamed Geele, 29, told a packed court in the central Danish town of Aarhus, speaking calmly in Danish....

Geele, who is suspected of breaking into 75-year-old Kurt Westergaard's home on January 1 last year wielding an axe and trying to kill him, could face life in prison if found guilty on all counts: attempted terrorism, attempted murder, attacking a police officer and illegal arms possession....

Geele, who Danish intelligence police say is linked to the Somali Islamist movement Al-Shebab, insisted he had "bought the axe to help a friend cut down a tree."

"But I brought it with me to Aarhus because I was very angry with (Westergaard) and wanted to break down his door to talk with him," acknowledged the defendant, who appeared calm and collected before the court, wearing a black sweater, jeans and glasses.

Geele, who had an obvious limp from injuries he sustained during his arrest, stressed that he was "a Muslim who follows the precepts of Islam and who prays and goes to the mosque."

On the night of January 1, 2010, the Somali "broke down the front door with an axe and destroyed the television set and computer in the living room, screaming in Danish that he was going to kill me because I had offended the Muslim prophet," Westergaard told AFP on the eve of the trial.

The cartoonist, who was alone at home at the time with the five-year-old daughter of a friend, rushed into a bathroom that had been fortified and transformed into a panic room to "seek safety and call the police."...

Before Geele took a train and taxi from his home in Copenhagen to Westergaard's house in Viby, near Aarhus, he had "shaved his entire body and his clothes smelled strongly of perfume," the prosecutor said, hinting that the man had performed a "ritual" often carried out by those who want to die as martyrs.

She also said police had found a computer at the Red Cross centre where Geele worked that he had used to conduct research on axes and to locate Westergaard's home.

The cartoonist has faced numerous death threats since the publication of his drawing of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse....

Westergaard remains clueless: "Danish Mohammed cartoonist attacker goes on trial," by Slim Allagui for AFP, January 18:

[...] Westergaard, who is scheduled to testify Thursday, said he thought "he will be sentenced to a heavy prison sentence."

"I do not want to excuse his actions, but I would really like to understand how he got to that point. Maybe he was manipulated," the cartoonist suggests, insisting more than five years after his drawing first appeared that it does not represent Mohammed.

"I made a caricature of a terrorist who evokes Islam and who abuses it, as some would say," said Westergaard, who today is closely watched over by bodyguards....

"A terrorist who evokes Islam and who abuses it." Of course. Everyone knows that it's a Religion of Peace. And if you don't say so, they might hack through your front door with an axe.

Molly Norris should be given full protection by a U.S. Government determined to defend the freedom of speech against violent jihadist intimidation. Instead, we get yet more dhimmitude. "Leaks OK, but don't cross Islam," by Debra J. Saunders, January 5 (thanks to Twostellas):

While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is celebrating his $1 million-plus book deal on a 600-acre estate and enjoying his status as a lefty fringe hero, former cartoonist Molly Norris is in hiding.

The moral of this column is that in today's world, cartoons, if they target Islam, can be more hazardous to your health than crossing the mighty U.S. government and its allies.

Swedish and Danish authorities arrested four suspected militant Islamic jihadists last week for allegedly planning a terrorist attack before this weekend. Their target was the Jyllands-Posten news bureau in Copenhagen. In 2006, the newspaper became the target of terrorist threats after it printed controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. Authorities say the suspects arrested planned to use the same "swarm" tactics used in the 2008 Mumbai killing spree that left at least 160 people dead.

Kurt Westergaard drew a cartoon that depicted Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Last January, a Somali man wielding an ax and demanding "revenge" broke into Westergaard's home. In 2009, Danish authorities arrested three men for planning to behead Westergaard.

Like Westergaard, Jyllands-Posten Editor Flemming Rose, who commissioned the cartoons, now has round-the-clock security. I asked via e-mail how many planned attacks against his paper and cartoonists have been thwarted.

Rose answered that this latest episode represents the sixth or seventh foiled attack....

When we met in 2008, Rose summarized what summed up "The Cartoon Crisis." "They are basically saying, 'If you say we are violent, we are going to kill you.'"

And: "If you give in to intimidation, you will not get less intimidation, you will get more intimidation."

Back to Molly Norris. In April, the one-time Seattle Weekly cartoonist made the mistake of drawing a cartoon that called for an "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day." Norris was reacting to Comedy Central's decision to censor parts of the show "South Park" that depicted a cartoon Muhammad dressed in a bear suit -- wink, wink -- lest showing an image of the prophet offend. The network also bleeped out verbal references to Muhammad.

Norris quickly renounced the idea and apologized to the Muslim community. But that didn't stop American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki from declaring that that Norris should be "a prime target of assassination." Al-Awlaki, you may recall, has been linked to the attempted Times Square bombing, last year's failed Christmas Day bombing on a Detroit-bound plane, and the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 dead.

At the FBI's urging, Norris changed her name and wiped her identity....

A travesty.

The jihad network is international and found in every Western country. It thus calls for a coordinated international response, particularly from the Western governments that instead have not even admitted the nature of the threat itself.

Note also how CagePrisoners played the Muslim Victimhood Card with one of the jihadis who was just arrested for the mass-murder plot against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

"British links to Mumbai-style machinegun plot," by Duncan Gardham in the Telegraph, January 5 (thanks to Benedict):

Suspected terrorists arrested on their way to launch a Mumbai-style machinegun attack on a Danish newspaper had links with a network in Britain it can be disclosed.

Three men were arrested last week with a submachine gun, silencer and ammunition in the boot of their car after traveling from Sweden to Denmark to launch attacks in which they apparently planned to raid the offices of the newspaper and kill as many people as possible.

The arrested men are thought to have links with two men in Derby who were part of a network run by al-Qaeda mastermind Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the world's most wanted men....

However CagePrisoners, a British group campaigning for Muslim prisoners, used one of the figures arrested in the alleged Danish plot, Munir Awad, as a case-study for unjust imprisonment after he was arrested on separate trips to Somalia and Pakistan.

CagePrisoners, which is supported by the Joseph Rowntree trust and Amnesty International, has previously helped publicise the work of Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior figure with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular.

UPDATE: Jihad Watch reader Tol has kindly sent in a correct translation, which now appears below.

Apparently it is now against the rules of the Swedish ice hockey league to draw pictures of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Sharia comes to Sweden: here is an English translation of "Hockeydomare stängs av efter karikatyr på Facebook," from SvD, January 2 (thanks to Christer):

Hockey Referee suspended after caricature on Facebook

A Swedish ice hockey referee has been suspended after he published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook. According to Aftonbladet, even SAPO (the Swedish Intelligence Agency) has been brought into the matter....

According to anonymous sources SAPO has also been advised on the incident. Aftonbladet was unable to contact either the suspended referee or SAPO for comment.

Thanks a lot, kuffar. "Danish attack plot suspect in previous arrests," by Nina Larson for AFP, December 31 (thanks to David):

STOCKHOLM -- One of five men held over a foiled plot to massacre staff at a Danish newspaper had twice been arrested abroad suspected of terror links, the foreign ministry and media said Friday.

Munir Awad, a 29-year-old Swede born in Lebanon, had publicly thanked the Swedish secret service, Saepo, for obtaining his release from Somalia where he was detained three years ago.

"We know Saepo brought us home and we are very grateful," he told a newspaper at the time.

Swedish foreign ministry spokesman Anders Joerle confirmed the previous arrests and that Sweden had intervened on Awad's behalf.

"Awad was arrested in Somalia by Ethiopian troops. That was in 2007. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2009," foreign ministry spokesman Anders Joerle told AFP.

"The Swedish foreign ministry helped them. I wouldn't say to free him, but what we did was insist that he either should be tried or set free," he added.

Awad was one of five men arrested in Denmark and Sweden on Wednesday for hatching what Danish officials called a plan to "kill as many people as possible" in an assault on the Jyllands-Posten daily....

In FrontPage this morning I discuss the persistence of cartoon rage in the face of the latest attempted jihad attack against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten:

[...] Ultimately, then, the cartoon controversy is a question of the freedom of speech, and of a realistic appraisal of the jihad threat - even if expressed wryly or satirically. The cartoon controversy indicates the gulf between the Islamic world and the post-Christian West in matters of freedom of speech and expression. And yet if the West responds to plots such as the latest one in Denmark by limiting the freedom of speech as the OIC and other Muslim entities are demanding, it may yet turn out that this homage to the idols of tolerance, multiculturalism, and pluralism will mean the end of the hard-won freedoms that made Western civilization great.

Freedom of speech encompasses precisely the freedom to annoy, to ridicule, to offend. If it doesn't, it is hollow. The instant that any person or ideology is considered off-limits for critical examination and even ridicule, freedom of speech has been replaced by an ideological straitjacket. Westerners seem to grasp this easily when it comes to affronts to Christianity, even when they are as sharp-edged and offensive as Andres Serrano's Piss Christ or Chris Ofili's dung- and pornography-encrusted Holy Virgin Mary. But the same clarity of thought doesn't seem to carry over to an Islamic context.

Yet that is where it is needed most today. The cartoon controversy, insignificant and even silly as it may be in its origins, is an increasingly serious challenge to Western notions of pluralism and freedom of speech. As such, those whom Islamic supremacists are targeting in cartoon jihads must be vigorously and unapologetically defended. To do less would mean death for a free society.

There is more.

The Muhammad cartoons are still, in the minds of Islamic supremacists the world over, worth killing for. "BREAKING Four Held In Denmark Terror Arrests," from SkyNews, December 29 (thanks to Benedict):

Four people suspected of planning a terror attack against a newspaper that printed controversial cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed have been arrested.

Danish intelligence services said that three of the four men were Swedish residents who entered the country between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning....

"The riots ended when Syria 'felt that "the message had been delivered"'" -- and that message was that the West must curb the freedom of speech regarding Islam and jihad, or else. "Syria helped orchestrate 2006 Mohammed cartoon riots, WikiLeaks cables reveal," from DPA, December 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The government of Syria was active in organizing the 2006 riots that erupted across the Arab world following the publication of controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, Oslo daily Aftenposten reported Monday, quoting US diplomatic cables released by website WikiLeaks.

"The Prophet Mohammed." DPA, like all mainstream media news outlets, has decided that we're all Muslims now.

The cartoons were originally published in neighboring Denmark in 2005. Their publication resulted in violent protests, including attacks on several embassies in Damascus in early February 2006. Embassies targeted included those of Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

A US diplomatic cable published by Aftenposten said the Syrian premier had, "several days before the demonstrations, instructed the Grand Mufti Sheikh Hassoun to issue a strongly worded directive to the imams delivering Friday sermons in the mosques of Damascus."

The riots ended when Syria "felt that 'the message had been delivered'," the cable said, quoting a Sunni sheikh whose name was blacked out....

Our old friend and former colleague Raymond Ibrahim here confirms my analysis here of the motivation behind the attack on Sweden: it's all about the Lars Vilks and Motoon and the freedom of speech.

"Swedish Jihad Revelations," by Raymond Ibrahim for Hudson New York (via RaymondIbrahim.com), December 20:

Back in 2004, in one of his most recognized messages to America, Osama bin Laden, responding to then President George Bush Jr.'s claims that Al Qaeda hates freedom, rhetorically asked, "If so [if Al Qaeda hates freedom], let him [Bush] explain to us why we have not attacked Sweden, for example."

Days ago, on December 11, an Al Qaeda affiliated suicide bomber attacked Sweden--the first terrorist attack in Sweden in three decades, and its first ever suicide attack. The attempt largely failed (only the bomber died, two Swedes were injured). Even so, it "could have been truly catastrophic," said one official.

So much for Sweden epitomizing Al Qaeda's "respect" for freedom. Why the change in policy? In fact, according to an audio-recording issued by the terrorists minutes before the attack, the vitriol is such that "all Mujahadeen [jihadists] in Europe and Sweden" are to prepare for action: "Now is the time to strike, don't wait any longer." [...]

As for motives, according to the audio-recording, there are three: Sweden will be a target of the jihad "as long as you do not [1] end your war against Islam and [2] humiliation of the Prophet and [3] your stupid support for the pig Vilks."

The first point--"war against Islam"--appears to be a reference to Sweden's 500 troop presence in Afghanistan. Yet Sweden is only one of nearly fifty countries--including Muslim ones--to have a presence in Afghanistan; Turkey alone has contributed nearly four times as many troops. And most of these nations have not (yet) been targeted. Moreover, Sweden has been a troop contributing nation since July 24, 2003--well over a year before Osama portrayed it as a neutral country, undeserving of attack. (Perhaps he meant Switzerland, which is known for its neutrality, and is often conflated with Sweden by Middle Easterners?)

The second and third reasons cited--"humiliation of the Prophet" and "support for Vilks"--are one and the same and, in fact, the immediate reason behind the attack. Context: back in 2007, Swedish artist Lars Vilks drew unflattering caricatures of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Since then, Al Qaeda has set a bounty on him (the reward increases if he is "slaughtered like a lamb"); he has already been physically assaulted and his house nearly burned down.

Swedish freedom of speech and expression, then, is what prompted the attack. In fact, eliminating Western freedoms--or at least conforming them to the dictates of sharia law, which, among other things, forbid mockery of Muhammad--is a longstanding Islamist goal. Nor is it limited to violence; rather, the West's very legal system is being exploited, through Islamist "lawfare" designed to censor free speech concerning Islam (prompting countermeasures such as the Middle East Forum's Legal Project)....

Read it all.

Worth murdering for?

The Cartoon Jihad will never end until the West gives up the freedom of speech -- or defends it robustly enough to end the threats and jihad plots that result from exercising it.

"Stockholm bomber's terrorist group threatens Ikea and Volvo," by Duncan Gardham and Richard Spencer in the Telegraph, December 14:

An al-Qaeda group associated with the Stockholm suicide bomber has called for attacks on other Swedish targets including Ikea and Volvo.

Shumukh al-Islam, a web forum connected to al-Qaeda, produced the first photographs of the bomber along with a copy of his will in Arabic, calling him "our brother."

Alongside the will, they produced a statement by the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq calling for attacks on Swedish businesses in revenge for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed....

Like other mainstream media outlets, the Telegraph has apparently decided that we are all Muslims now.

The statement on Swedish businesses was originally issued by the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi three years ago.

In it, Baghdadi, who was killed in a US rocket attack in April, calls for "industrial giants" to be attacked including Ericsson, Scandia, Volvo, Ikea and Electrolux and puts a bounty $100,000 on the head of Lars Vicks, the Swedish cartoonist, $50,000 on the editor of a newspaper that published the cartoon.

The statement on Shumukh al-Islam claimed the bombing in Sweden had been a success because it "caused pain in their hearts and widespread panic, and it was denounced by nations and religions and it pleased the Muslim people."

The statement added: "Nor did the brother martyr--as we consider him--forget to remind Sweden that his action was nothing but a promise taken by the Islamic State, and therefore he and others were in Sweden, and they will avenge the Muslims."

It said that in his will, Abdulwahab was "recalling the crimes of the dog Lars Vicks and his frivolous cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, for which the Islamic State had declared his blood permissible and promised a financial reward to whomever plucks off his head or cuts his throat, as mentioned by the leader of men in our time Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, God have mercy on his soul, in an audio message that terrified Sweden at the time."

In Abulwahab's will, reproduced in Arabic for the readers of Shumukh al-Islam, the bomber said his actions were "thanks to Lars Vilks and his paintings of the Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, and your soldiers in Afghanistan and your silence on all this so shall your children, daughters, brothers and sisters die in the same way as our brothers and sisters and children die."

He added: "Now the Islamic states have fulfilled what they promised you. We are here in Europe and in Sweden, we are a reality, not an invention, I will not say more about this.

To his family he added: "Try to forgive me....Forgive me for my lies. I never went to the Middle East to work or earn money, I went there for jihad. I hope that you can understand me some time. I could never have told you all this or to anyone."

Last night, Abu Suleiman al-Nasser, the man who posted the will on Shumukh al-Islam, issued another statement that said: "It seems that you haven't understood the message, and you remain insistent in your stance, and the battle of Stockholm isn't but the start of a new era in our Jihad; through which Europe will become the field for our battles."

War Is Deceit, after all. "Wife of terrorism convict pleads guilty; will have to leave U.S.," by Carol Cratty for CNN, November 8:

Alexandria, Virginia (CNN) -- The Ugandan wife of an American-born man who pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists entered her own guilty plea on Monday.

Proscovia Kampire Nzabanita, dressed head-to-toe in conservative Muslim dress with her face covered, pleaded guilty to making a false statement when questioned by a federal investigator about her husband, Zachary Chesser.

Chesser, 20, was accused of posting an online attack against the creators of the animated TV series "South Park" due to the program's depiction of the Prophet Mohammed.

On October 20, Chesser agreed to plead guilty to the terrorist support charge, as well as charges of communicating threats and soliciting crimes of violence. He will be sentenced in January, and is expected to receive a sentence of at least 20 years in prison....

According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Nzabanita will serve no prison time but must leave the United States within 120 days and give up her legal status.

Federal Judge Gerald Bruce Lee allowed Nzabanita to remain free on bail of $250,000 and ordered that she reside with her mother as her guardian until the sentencing....

Good thing the judge is so security-minded.

In her plea agreement, Nzabanita admitted she lied in that interview by saying Chesser had attempted to fly to Uganda on July 10 to retriever her birth certificate, according to the news release. In reality, Chesser planned to ultimately make his way to Somalia to help the terrorist group al-Shabaab, the news release said....

Prosecutors also said Chesser, of Fairfax County, Virginia, had exchanged e-mails with Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whose name has been linked to an attack and an attempted attack on the United States.

Common sense. "If Islam were treated equally, Mohammed would be fair game," by Lorne Gunter in the National Post, October 20 (thanks to Twostellas):

During the controversy over cartoons of Mohammed that appeared in a Danish newspaper in 2005, I received an email from a reader insisting, "This is about treating Islam equally! I am a Muslim and all we want is for our religion to be treated with the same respect as other religions."

The problem with his demand is that the cartoonists in question did treat Islam in the same way Western culture treats Christianity, Judaism and other faiths. The media typically reserves no special reverence or respect for the major Western religions (including their Prophets). And so if Islam were treated "equally," then Mohammed would be fair game, too.

How many times in the past decades can you remember lib-left media commentators disparaging the way Christian fundamentalists propped up George Bush -- typically in language that implied Christian voters were less intelligent than most? Read the Toronto Star on any day and there will be two or three references to Christians and the Harper government that drip with sneering disdain for the views and brains of both.

Of course there are also Andres Serrano's Piss Christ photograph and Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary, made in part out of dung, among other artworks that have challenged Western notions of faith and perception.

Few Western media outlets would censor cartoon depictions of Christ. Danish publishers merely wanted the same lack of courtesy extended to Islam and its prophet....

If there is any justice in the Netherlands, or enough backbone to defend Western civilization, Mr. Wilders will go free.

"His wife is believed to be the woman in a full burqa at a post-arrest hearing in Alexandria, Va. The woman declined to speak to media at the time, her eyes welling with tears." And no doubt many kuffar were fooled. War Is Deceit Update: "Wife of 'South Park' Threat Maker Charged," by Mike Levine for Fox News, October 18 (thanks to Urban Infidel):

The wife of the Virginia man who was arrested in July after allegedly threatening the creators of the television show "South Park" and trying to a join a terrorist group in Somalia is being charged with a federal offense herself.

Proscovia Kampire Nzabanita made false statements to investigators, according to charging documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Her husband, 20-year-old Zachary Chesser, was arrested over the summer for allegedly trying to join the Al Qaeda-linked group Al Shabab in Somalia. Nzabanita is not currently in custody, according to a Justice Department official.

The FBI and others conducted a months-long investigation into at least two alleged attempts by Chesser to join Al Shabab, which has been fighting to establish a strict Muslim state in Somalia and has pledged its allegiance to Usama bin Laden.

Authorities charged Chesser with providing material support to a terrorist group.

His wife is believed to be the woman in a full burqa at a post-arrest hearing in Alexandria, Va. The woman declined to speak to media at the time, her eyes welling with tears.

During the FBI's investigation, agents found a "hand-written document" titled "How to Destroy the West," Justice Department lawyer John Gibbs told the presiding judge at the time. The document, allegedly written by Chesser, discussed ways of attacking the United States and other countries, including cyber-attacks, vehicles filled with explosives, and the bio-agent ricin, Gibbs said.

In addition, Chesser communicated several times with Anwar Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric tied to several recent terrorist plots inside the United States, prosecutors said. He also posted an array of "extremist" videos, "jihad propaganda" and other potentially dangerous materials online, including a leaked version of sensitive Transportation Security Administration guidelines and a message suggesting the creators of the show "South Park" could face death for their depiction of the prophet Mohammed, according to prosecutors....

A mainstream media columnist notices media cowardice in the face of violent intimidation from Islamic supremacists. More on this story. "On the Media: Where's Muhammad? Not on many comics pages," by James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times, October 13:

[...] Cartoonist Wiley Miller gets credit for offering a more precise and reasoned rejoinder with his "Non Sequitur" offering of Oct. 3. The only hitch: the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post and many other papers pulled the cartoon that had been drawn to highlight the madness of the extremists and the hypersensitivity of the media.

By killing the panel the newspapers fell into the very kind of timidity or conflict aversion that the cartoon had intended to expose. A mildly provocative image that would have slipped quickly into obscurity instead has won a second life, more powerful and ironic by its initial absence. [...]

These insane calls to violence have gone on for too long. And the insistence on a zone of safety and security for free speech must remain sacrosanct. Who wants to live in a world where benign protests like Norris' (who has moved and changed her identity) can lead to a death sentence?

But that's not the lone standard for newspaper editors, who want to inform without needlessly offending. Inflammatory pictures and stories get spiked on occasion to preserve a civil sounding board.

It's hard to believe that Miller's sunny "Non Sequitur" fit in this category. In the park scene, a dog walks his master, a giraffe licks an ice cream cone and a hippo suns himself. The prophet is present only in his absence.

Somehow Washington Post Style editor Ned Martel viewed the same image as "a deliberate provocation without a clear message." He also told his paper's ombudsman that it might not be immediately clear to readers that Muhammad did not appear in the drawing.

The Boston Globe had a similar complaint. Deputy managing editor Christine Chinlund said via e-mail: "When a cartoon takes on a sensitive subject, especially religion, it has an obligation to be clear. The 'Where's Muhammad' cartoon did not meet that test. It leaves the reader searching for clues, staring at a busy drawing, trying to discern a likeness, wondering if the outhouse at the top of the drawing is significant -- in other words, perplexed."

Said Alice Short, an L.A. Times assistant managing editor: "If they had produced a 'Non Sequitur' cartoon that said 'Where's Jesus?' I probably wouldn't have wanted to run that either."...

Yeah, sure.

I couldn't reach editors at the San Francisco Chronicle and Dallas Morning News. Those papers also killed the cartoon, as did an untold number of others. Universal and Miller said they had no way of keeping count. At the Austin ( Texas) American-Statesman a senior editor named Drew Marcks told me when I asked about the cartoon, "I'd rather not talk about it."

I pressed. He hung up.

Of course. What can a coward say about his cowardice?

Of course it isn't, because the OIC is not after partial submission to its demands that free speech become subject to Sharia. So, a book about the cartoons that doesn't condemn them as the worst crime against humanity in the past 100 years, and that even reproduces a reduced-size version of the front page of Jyllands-Posten from the day the 'toons were printed, still leaves a lot to be suppressed as far as the OIC is concerned.

And do remember that the OIC wants the UN to develop "a legally binding institutional instrument" to put an end to free speech that could offend Islamic sensibilities.

As shown below, they push their agenda by portraying anything offensive to or critical of Islam as "incitement." Never mind the fact that the people getting hurt in the wake of the cartoons have been in danger from Muslims threatening and attacking the artists and publishers, or from rampages by Muslims in the streets of Muslim countries.

But unless and until the OIC can corral enough sympathizers and useful idiots at the UN to get its way, there's much bullying to be done of individual countries -- in this case, Denmark.

An update on this story. "OIC condemns publication of Danish book," by Habib Shaikh for the Khaleej Times, October 2 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

JEDDAH -- The Organisation of the Islamic Conference has condemned the publication of the book Tyranny of Silence in Denmark.

The book, containing blasphemous caricatures, hit the stores in Denmark on Thursday amid concerns over a backlash from the Muslim world.

The cartoons were first published by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, resulting in condemnation from Muslims around the world.

Note the incredible sense of entitlement to order around the Danish government:

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu expressed his dismay and disappointment at the release of the book despite the fact that he, and some leaders of Muslim countries, had personally written letters to the foreign minister of Denmark, urging the Danish government to stop the publication of the book because of its highly provocative and inciting content.

Incitement to what? Laughter at the cartoons? Smiles? Nods of approval as one proceeds through the book?

He reiterated this position when he met the foreign minister of Denmark recently on the sidelines of the 65th session of the UN General Assembly.

Emphasising the moral responsibility of the political leadership of Denmark, Ihsanoglu said the publication of the book was a deliberate attempt to incite prejudice and animosity. This would undermine the ongoing efforts of the international community to promote understanding and peaceful coexistence among people of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds.

Referring to a statement issued by the Danish foreign ministry, he said the publication constituted a flagrant violation of the stipulation of Article 20 of the 1966 International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.

It's always ironic to hear the OIC talk about civil and political rights. What's the priority here? A Muslim's right not to be offended by a cartoon.

He added that in addition the Danish Criminal Code, in section 140, stipulates that people's religious feelings should be protected against mockery and scorn; and in section 266, stipulates that groups of persons should be protected against scorn and degradation on account of their religion, among other things.

If that law is correct as he quoted it, it certainly never anticipated the abuses and agenda of Islamic law. Danes might do well to modify it in response.

He said the publication of the book substantiates OIC's argument that certain groups and individuals are abusing freedom of expression laws to fuel hatred towards Islam and Muslims in some parts of the Western world.

All criticism, all concerns, all expressions of disagreement with Islamic teachings must reflect an upwelling of seething, bilious hatred, you see. And all those hurt feelings from satire and parody: you're committing feeling-cide with malice aforethought!

You're a feeling-cidal maniac, you monster!

As the world braces for more insane violence from Muslims over these cartoons. "Mohammed cartoons book goes on sale in Denmark," from AFP, September 30 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

COPENHAGEN -- A book on the crisis sparked by a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed five years ago hit stores in Denmark on Thursday amid concerns over a backlash from the Muslim world.

Remember: human beings control their own reactions to things. If Muslims choose yet again to riot and murder because of these cartoons, that would be a choice they make out of an unlimited array of other choices. Western authorities have fallen into the Islamic supremacists' trap and are starting to behave in just the way they want them to: thinking that they must not do certain things, because if they do, there will be violence from Muslims. Yet that violence is in every case solely the responsibility of the perpetrator, not of anyone else.

At one bookshop in Copenhagen, staff prepared for a busy day of trading with Flemming Rose's "The Tyranny of Silence" on the shelves, but fears were also high after a month in which Denmark faced two new security alerts.

On Tuesday an Iraqi Kurd being held in Norway on suspicion of planning bombings admitted that his target was the Jyllands-Posten daily.

Exactly five years ago -- on September 30, 2005 -- the newspaper, where Rose was cultural editor, ran a front-page spread featuring 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The drawings sparked outrage across the Muslim world and led to violent protests against Denmark and Danish interests in 2006. Rose himself has since received numerous death threats.

Danish police confirmed the Norwegian claim and said Denmark had become a "priority terrorist target for Islamic extremists."

"Among Islamic militants, it is a priority objective to lead terrorist attacks against Denmark and symbols related to the caricature case," the head of Danish intelligence Jakob Scharf said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Danish police arrested a Chechen man in connection with a small explosion at a central Copenhagen hotel.

Investigators later said he was planning a letter bomb for the Jyllands-Posten.

"This is the second time in a very short period that the public has learned that Jyllands-Posten has probably been the target of organised terrorist acts," head of the Danish Intelligence Service PET, Jakob Scharf, said in a statement.

"This naturally illustrates that, among Islamic militants, it is a priority objective to lead terrorist attacks against Denmark and symbols related to the caricature case," he added.

In a bid to "avoid new confrontations" Denmark's foreign minister met ambassadors of 17 Muslim countries on Wednesday, ahead of the book's publication.

He was almost certainly telling them how sorry he was and pleading for leniency, when he should have told them, "Stop the madness! If anyone gets hurt or killed because of this book, the insane violence of your societies will be revealed to the world!"

The 499-page book will not reprint the drawings separately, but its inside pages will feature "a picture of the front page of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that had the Mohammed cartoons on it," it's [sic] editor said....

In an August interview, Rose insisted he was not trying to be provocative with the new book, stressing that he simply wanted to "tell the story of the 12 drawings and put them into a context of (other) pictures considered offensive.

It was important to write the book because, he said: "Words should be answered with words.

"That's all we have in a democracy, and if we give that up, we will be locked in a tyranny of silence."

Indeed. And it is coming down fast.

Killing for a cartoon: If one's priorities are so disordered, that mentality will have far-reaching effects on the stability of one's culture, society, and economy. The resulting climate of fear stifles development and innovation: Why think outside the box if it will get you killed? And why develop anything if the next enraged mob will burn it down? In other words, the logical conclusion of this sort of behavior is jihad causing and perpetuating poverty through mental enslavement and physical terror.

It is a consequence of the absence of that mentality that explains why Danes and Norwegians aren't flocking to Islamic countries for a better life, but the other way around.

An update on this story. "Police: Norway terror plot targeted Danish paper," by Jan M. Olden and Bjoern H. Amland for the Associated Press, September 26:

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Three terror suspects who were arrested in an alleged al-Qaida plot in Norway were likely planning an attack against a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, Norwegian and Danish police said Tuesday.

The intelligence branch of Denmark's police, PET, said the suspects were believed to be planning an attack either against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper directly or against people in Denmark linked to the 12 drawings that sparked outrage in Muslim countries in 2006.

The men were arrested July 8 in what U.S. and Norwegian officials believe was a plot linked to the same Pakistan-based al-Qaida planners behind thwarted schemes to blow up New York's subway and a British shopping mall.

Siv Alsen, spokeswoman at the Norwegian Police Security Service, told The Associated Press that one of the suspects, 37-year-old Iraqi Kurd Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak Bujak, had disclosed the plot to investigators.

"We can confirm that he has confessed and explained about his role in planning terror. He was planning this together with the two others arrested," Alsen said. "The information we got indicates that it (Jyllands-Posten) was the target."

Gratitude:

The other suspects in the case are 31-year-old Uzbek national David Jakobsen and the alleged ringleader, 39-year-old Mikael Davud, an Uighur who came to Norway in 1999 and has Norwegian citizenship.

Their lawyers have said they intend to plead innocent to any terror charges.

Brynjar Meling, Bujak's defense lawyer, confirmed to The Associated Press that his client had admitted to being involved in the plot.

"He says that it's important as a Muslim to tell the truth," Meling said. "It is important that the matter doesn't become bigger than it already is and damage Muslims more than it already has done."

Meling said Bujak told investigators the suspects had dropped their plans even before they were arrested and that Bujak wasn't linked to al-Qaida in any way. Meling declined to comment on whether Jyllands-Posten was the target.

An AP investigation shows that authorities learned early on about the alleged cell by intercepting e-mails from an al-Qaida operative in Pakistan.

It was the second time this month that Scandinavian police said the Danish newspaper was the target of planned attacks.

On Sept. 10, a Chechen boxer was injured in a small explosion at a Copenhagen hotel while preparing a letter bomb, likely intended for the Jyllands-Posten, Danish police said.

PET chief Jakob Scharf said Tuesday that the two cases, which were not believed to be related, "illustrate that there is a priority among militant Islamists to carry out acts of terror against Denmark and symbols connected" to the cartoons.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

And so people have to die. Priorities:

Intelligence officials say Denmark remains in the cross-hairs of Islamic terrorists because of the cartoons, which were first published by Jyllands-Posten five years ago, and reprinted by a range of Western papers in early 2006, triggering fiery protests from Morocco to Indonesia.

A Somali man is facing terror charges after police say he broke into the home of one of the cartoonists armed with a knife and ax. The cartoonist was unharmed.

Jyllands-Posten's headquarters in Aarhus, western Denmark, is protected by a metal fence and round-the-clock security guards. All mail is scanned before being opened.

"We feel safe about the security measures that surround us," Lars Munch, managing director of the media group that owns Jyllands-Posten, told AP.

In Front Page this morning I discuss the sad case of Molly Norris, the "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" cartoonist, who has gone into hiding:

[...] This is the sort of case that the President of the United States should be talking about. As he wrung his hands about the prospect of Muslim rioting over Qur'an-burning, and told the prospective Qur'an-burner to stand down rather than admonishing Muslims not to react with violent rage to something that did not harm them, the Molly Norris case gave Barack Obama an opportunity. He should have gone on television and given a brief lesson about how freedom of speech is a foremost bulwark against tyranny and a cornerstone of any society that respects the dignity of the human being.

Obama could have said that the idea that Molly Norris would have to give up her career and the name she had established as a cartoonist, and live in hiding because of a cartoon, or series of cartoons, is unconscionable. He could have told the Islamic world that neither Muslims nor their prophet were harmed by cartoons depicting Muhammad, and that the willingness of some Muslims to commit murder over such depictions was the only thing that makes people care to draw Muhammad in the first place.

Obama could also have said that to threaten people with death and to kill people who had nothing to do with any cartoons of Muhammad because of those cartoons was sheer madness, and was a form of violent irrationality that was destructive to free societies -- and as such, it was something that the U.S. would do everything it could to resist. He could have announced that Molly Norris and others who were threatened by Islamic supremacists for exercising their freedom of speech or freedom of expression would be given full round-the-clock protection -- and that if violent protests and riots over cartoons or Qur'an-burning broke out in areas where American troops are deployed, those troops would put down those riots and protect the innocent to the fullest possible extent.

Meanwhile, there is no indication (officially, anyway) that Molly Norris is receiving any aid from law enforcement authorities as she disappears and reconstructs her identity - in sharp contrast to the Ground Zero mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is receiving protection from the New York City Police Department because of threats he has allegedly received. In even sharper contrast, Gainsville, Florida authorities have announced that they plan to bill the abortive Qur'an-burner Terry Jones $180,000 for security costs for the Qur'an-burning event that he ultimately called off - despite the fact that they never bothered to warn Jones beforehand that he would be footing the bill.

Apparently when Muslims behave with violent irrationality, it is entirely the responsibility of non-Muslims who supposedly "provoke" them to clean up the mess they make. It is unfortunate that in these dark days we don't seem to have any leaders who will stand up for the principles of freedom of expression, explaining their importance and defending their necessity. Molly Norris, and every free citizen, deserves nothing less.

Worth committing mass murder for

Instead, it blew up in his face.

Motoon Rage just goes on and on: "Bomb suspect 'targeted' Danish paper Jyllands-Posten," from the BBC, September 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Danish police think a man hurt in a blast was making a letter bomb to use against a newspaper which published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The man was arrested in a park in Copenhagen on 10 September after a small explosion at a nearby hotel.

Police spokesman Svend Foldager said the device would have had the explosive force of a hand grenade.

He was "reasonably confident" Jyllands-Posten had been targeted by the suspect, who denies any crime.

The suspected would-be letter bomber pleaded not guilty to firearms charges and putting lives at risk when he appeared in court on 11 September.

He has been named by police as Lors Dukayev, born in 1986 in Chechnya and now living in Belgium....

Molly Norris conceived of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" as a joke, but it went viral in part because it was a gesture of defiance in the face of violent threats and intimidation: if Islamic supremacists were threatening to murder Motoonists Kurt Westergaard and Lars Vilks, and anyone else who dared to draw Muhammad, then if everyone drew him, the thugs couldn't possibly kill us all, could they?

Well, no, they couldn't. But Anwar Al-Awlaki, the American-born imam who is linked to so much jihadist activity in the United States, including the Fort Hood jihad assassin, the Christmas underwear jihad bomber, and even 9/11, called for her death. And so now she has disappeared. There is no more Molly Norris: she has changed her name and gone into hiding.

This is the sort of case that the President of the United States should be talking about. Instead of wringing his hands about the prospect of Muslim rioting over Qur'an-burning, the President should go on television and give a brief lesson about how freedom of speech is a foremost bulwark against tyranny and a cornerstone of any society that respects the dignity of the human being. He should say that the idea that Molly Norris would have to live in hiding because of a cartoon, or series of cartoons, is unconscionable, and tell the Islamic world that neither Muslims nor their prophet are harmed by cartoons depicting him, and that their violent rage over such depictions is the only thing that makes people care to draw him in the first place. He should say that to threaten people with death and to kill people over cartoons of Muhammad is sheer madness, and is a form of violent irrationality that is destructive to free societies -- and as such, it is something that the U.S. will do everything it can to resist. Molly Norris and others who are threatened will be given full round-the-clock protection, and if violent protests and riots over cartoons or Qur'an-burning break out in areas where American troops are deployed, those troops will put down those riots and protect the innocent to the fullest possible extent.

Maybe in January 2013 we will have a president who will see the need to do such things, and move to protect and defend Western culture and civilization.

"On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears From View," by Mark D. Fefer in the Seattle Weekly, September 15 (thanks to all who sent this in):

You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, "going ghost": moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program--except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It's all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon....

He said it. "Gambian president: Islam is the best religion," from the Ahlul Bayt News Agency, September 14 (thanks to Twostellas):

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh on Monday said Islam is not a religion of violence and that true Muslims are noble and honorable.

President Jammeh, a stanch Muslim himself, made the remarks during his annual traditional meeting with Banjul Muslim elders at State House in the Gambian capital Banjul.

He also used the forum to speak against Terry Jones in the United State who vowed to burn the Muslim holy book Quran.

"The people in the West. I want to send you a message. The message is that Islam is the best religion, and that there would be no other prophet after the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW)," said the president.

He said there is a lot of double standards in the West. "Your security cannot be guaranteed by fighting Islam. We Muslims will defend our religion with our blood, and we will never be intimidated," said Jammeh.

President Jammeh stressed that he has never seen any demonstration where the holy Quran is being burnt. "Any country that allows any copy of the holy Quran being burnt, Bilahi Walahi Talayi, you will regret it," he declared.

The Gambian leader asked if denying the holocaust is crime, then why not caricaturing the holy Prophet of Islam.

He further noted that such an action could endanger world peace, warning that anyone who plays with it would surely pay the price.

Insulting any religion is not freedom of expression, neither is caricaturing the holy Quran, he said.

"Caricaturing the holy Prophet (SAW) is unacceptable, and we will not accept it and there would surely be consequences. If you want your security respected then respect the security of others; if you want to be dignified, respect the dignity of others," he added.

The Gambian leader made it clear that Islam has nothing to do with the Sept. 11 World Trade Center bombing. Muslims, he stressed, do not commit suicide.

He blamed those who claimed to be Muslims and rally behind the religion in the name of Jihad to terrorize innocent people, describing such people as Kafiri (unbelievers).

Jammeh said he has given powers to the Gambia Supreme Islamic Council to deal with "those troublemakers."

"We are true Muslims, and that is why we live side by side with Christians," he said.

Intolerance, he said, would not be accepted in the country, and does not care what the international community will say.

Predictably, "Aiman Mazyek of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany said in a statement: 'Merkel is honoring the cartoonist who in our view trampled on our Prophet and trampled on all Muslims'."

Are your prophet and religion really so fragile that one man's drawing can "trample" them? No, the real issue is a wounded sense of entitlement to be above criticism, ridicule, and satire, all of which are non-negotiable in the Western tradition of free speech.

"Merkel to honor Mohammed cartoonist at press award," by Stephen Brown and Knut Engelmann for Reuters, September 8 (thanks to JG):

(Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel risked angering Muslims by speaking at an awards ceremony on Wednesday for a Dane whose cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed provoked sometimes violent protests by Muslims five years ago.

The 75-year-old cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose drawings of Mohammed that offended Muslims worldwide first appeared in Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, was due to receive a prize Wednesday evening at a conference on freedom of the press.

At a time of fierce debate in Germany over disparaging remarks about Muslim immigrants made by a central bank member, some Muslims criticized the center-right chancellor and the media said she was taking a risk by honoring a man whom many Muslims believe insulted their faith.

Aiman Mazyek of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany said in a statement: "Merkel is honoring the cartoonist who in our view trampled on our Prophet and trampled on all Muslims."

"By having her photo taken next to Kurt Westergaard, Merkel is taking a huge risk," wrote the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung before the ceremony.

"It will probably be the most explosive appointment of her chancellorship so far."

The mass-circulation Bild, which has voiced admiration for Bundesbank member Thilo Sarrazin for depicting Turkish and Arab immigrants as welfare spongers who fail to integrate, praised Westergaard and said Merkel's presence showed Germany "does not back down in the face of threats from Islamist fanatics."

Organizers of the M100 Media Prize to be awarded at Potsdam near Berlin said the cartoons had "triggered an international controversy about freedom of speech and sparked worldwide, partly violent demonstrations of Muslims who felt insulted."

Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam to be offensive, and the Danish cartoons portrayed Mohammed with a turban shaped like a bomb. At least 50 people died in ensuing riots by enraged Muslims in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Westergaard stood by his work "invoking the right to freedom of speech," said the M100 prize committee, praising the Dane's "courage to stand by these democratic values and defend them, notwithstanding threats of violence and death."

The Organizers issued a statement from Merkel saying that, at a time when Germany is marking 20 years of unity after the fall of East Germany's communist regime, her country was "still conscious of what the lack of freedom implies."

Conservatives in Berlin's city assembly threw out a member for inviting Dutch anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders to speak next month.

"Anti-immigrant.": A narrow misrepresentation of Wilders' actual concerns about the transformation of Dutch society, and European societies in general.

But Wilders said he would "of course" still speak in the German capital despite the action taken by Merkel's Christian Democrats against councilor Rene Stadtkewitz, telling Reuters in an email he had "respect for Rene Stadtkewitz!"

Worth killing for

And the world yawns as this barbarity continues. "Jyllands-Posten's cartoons keep Denmark on the terrorist map," from the Copenhagen Post, August 30 (thanks to Paul):

Terrorist network al-Qaeda has released an official death list, naming nine people who have mocked the prophet Mohammed - three of whom are Danish. The list was published in Inspire, the organisation's first ever English language magazine.

It is now five years since Jyllands-Posten newspaper published their now notorious cartoons of the prophet, but it would seem the terrorist network has not forgotten the incident, as the three people on the list were all involved in the drawings.

They are the newspaper's former editor-in-chief Carsten Juste, its culture editor Flemming Rose, and the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the now infamous picture of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban....