Why do we call the New York Times the New Duranty Times? Because just as Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporter Walter Duranty covered up the Stalin-created Ukrainian famine of the 1930s, so today the Times is missing the biggest story of our age, the global jihad, preferring to pretend that there is no such global movement, or that if there is, it is insignificant. So it is somewhat refreshing to see that, after we have covered it here at Jihad Watch for months, the Times has finally taken notice of the Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy.
“Denmark Is Unlikely Front in Islam-West Culture War,” from the New Duranty Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:
COPENHAGEN – When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including one in which he is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, it expected a strong reaction in this country of 5.4 million people.
But the paper was unprepared for the global furor that ensued, including demonstrations in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, death threats against the artists, condemnation from 11 Muslim countries and a rebuke from the United Nations.
“The cartoons did nothing that transcends the cultural norms of secular Denmark, and this was not a provocation to insult Muslims,” said Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s largest newspaper, which has declined to apologize for the drawings.
“But if we talk of freedom of speech, even if it was a provocation, that does not make our right to do it any less legitimate before the law,” he added in an interview from Miami. He spent months living under police protection in Denmark….
It also has tested the patience of Denmark’s 200,000 Muslims. Many of them say the cartoons reflect an intensifying anti-immigrant climate that is stigmatizing minorities and radicalizing young Muslims.
Okay, let me get this straight. Muslims are offended at being portrayed as violent, so in response they turn violent?
And then there are those who portray themselves as victims because of the cartoons, despite the fact that it is the paper’s editor and the cartoonists who are living under death threats:
In Norrebro, an ethnically mixed neighborhood of Copenhagen where the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is buried and where kebab stands dot the tree-lined streets, Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban, a leader among Denmark’s Muslims, bristles at what he calls the “Islam phobia” gripping the country. He asserted that the cartoons had been calculated to incite Muslims because it was well known that in Islam depictions of the prophet were considered blasphemy.
“We are being mentally tortured,” Imam Ahmed said at his mosque, an anonymous building that looks more like an apartment complex than a house of worship. “The cartoons are an insult against Islam, an attempt by right-wing forces in this country to get a rise out of the Muslim community and so portray us as against Danish values.”…
Well if the Muslim community didn’t react so vehemently to what Christians or Jews would shrug off, those wicked right-wingers wouldn’t be able to do this, would they?
Annoyed at the self-censorship he said had overtaken Europe since the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered last year by a Muslim radical for criticizing Islam’s treatment of women, Mr. Rose said he decided to test Denmark’s free speech norms….
Soren Krarup, a retired priest and leading voice in the party, said the Muslim response to the cartoons showed that Islam was not compatible with Danish customs. He said Jesus had been satirized in Danish literature and popular culture for centuries – including a recent much-publicized Danish painting of Jesus with an erection – so why not Muhammad? He also argues that Muslims must learn to integrate.
“Muslims who come here reject our culture,” he said. “Muslim immigration is a way for Muslims to conquer us, just as they have done for the past 1,400 years.”
Muslim leaders say that such talk helped create the atmosphere that allowed the cartoons to be published. And they contend that it is alienating the people the Danish People’s Party says it wants to assimilate.
No. 9/11 created that atmosphere. And the killing of Van Gogh. And the Madrid bombings. And the London bombings. And on and on.