http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3436
From the desk of Thomas Landen
In September 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of twelve http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3420. Muslim fanatics announced their intention to kill the cartoonists and/or punish Denmark. The radical Islamists do not make unsubstantiated threats. They know that if they do not do take revenge for what they consider to be blasphemy they will lose face. The Muslim god does not forgive, he demands submission, also from the infidels.
Hence, it does not come as a surprise that last Tuesday the Danish police arrested three terrorists, one Dane of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians, for plotting to kill Kurt Westergaard, the artist who depicted Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. For several months now the 73-year old artist and his wife have been living in hiding, protected by the Danish police.
Yesterday, seventeen Danish papers reprinted Westergaard’s cartoon out of solidarity with the cartoonist and because they are prepared to “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2603 for free debate.” If the Western media were courageous and truly cared about freedom of speech they would all reprint the cartoons – not in order to insult people who do not read their papers anyway, but because by Western standards these cartoons are not particularly offensive and people who think that they are should not come and live in the West, but stay in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran or other places where people are not allowed to draw Muhammad cartoons.There is little hope, however, that the major papers in other countries apart from Denmark will reprint the cartoons. Most non-Danish European papers are cowards, while the Americans are naïve. They probably think that the terrorists who want to kill Westergaard for his cartoon feel insulted because of the bomb in the prophet’s turban, while the radical Islamists are proud of the bomb but feel insulted by the mere depicting of Muhammad which according to their religion is blasphemy: one is simply not allowed to depict Muhammad.
Iran has already reacted to the reprinting of the cartoon and summoned the Danish ambassador. Westerners accept this kind of arrogance, though they do not summon the Iranian ambassador every time Iran stones or hangs a woman because she has been raped.
The Danes, however, are angry. Kurt Westergaard issued the following statement:
“Of course I fear for my life after the Danish Security and Intelligence Service informed me of the concrete plans of certain people to kill me. However, I have turned fear into anger and indignation. It has made me angry that a perfectly normal everyday activity which I used to do by the thousand was abused to set off such madness. I have attended to my work and I still do. I could not possibly know for how long I have to live under police protection; I think, however, that the impact of the insane response to my cartoon will last for the rest of my life. It is sad indeed, but it has become a fact of my life.”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2968