Muslims Call for Punishment of Newspaper

The Danish cartoon controversy results from images of prophet Muhammad in the daily Jyllands-Posten newspaper which Muslims consider offensive. Yesterday, the offices of Jyllands-Posten in the northern town of Aarhus and downtown Copenhagen were evacuated after receiving a bomb threat.

From ArabNews.com:

Arab interior ministers yesterday called on Denmark to punish Jyllands-Posten. "We ask the Danish authorities to take the necessary measures to punish those responsible for this harm and to take action to avoid its repeat," the ministers said in a statement.

In the meantime, Palestinian gunmen raided the European Union's offices in Gaza to demand an apology. Danish embassies throughout the Arab world were besieged with protesters. And Muslims everywhere are boycotting Danish products. One analyst estimates the loss of over 10,000 jobs in Denmark if the boycott lasts for a year.

In response, right-wing Danish groups have called for anti-Muslim marches and boycotts of Arab shops.

Other countries have also joined the fray. German and French newspapers have reprinted the Danish caricatures of prophet Muhammad, ratcheting up Muslim ire. All the while, an apology from Jyllands-Posten failed to defuse the situation. A conciliatory statement by Danish Premier Rasmussen also failed. It appears that the Muslims won't be satisfied unless someone is imprisoned and Sharia-like prohibitions are written into Danish and other country's laws.

Another aspect of the story that hasn't been getting much attention is that the Muslim outrage at Jyllands-Posten may have been triggered by two Danish imams. Ahmed Akkari and Abu Laban compiled a dossier of racist and culturally insensitive images circulating in Denmark and took them on a 2005 road show in the Arab World. The dossier contained some outrageously offensive images of unknown origin which had never appeared in Jyllands-Posten.

Three, in particular, have produced seething anger. One showed Muhammad as a pedophile, another as a pig and the last depicted a praying Muslim being raped by a dog. None were in the newspaper but were shown throughout the Arab world as indications of Islamophobia in Denmark.

Thankfully, the Muslim response to the cartoons so far is somewhat less strident than previous episodes in which prophet Muhammad was disrespected. As a reminder, author Salman Rushdie wrote some unflattering words about Muhammad in The Satanic Verses and received a death sentence by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered for his film depicting the lives of Muslim women. I'd like to think the Muslims are mellowing and someday will respond like the rest of us do when we see something that offends us. We flip them the bird.

Of course, I may be spitting into the wind.

More details at The Jawa Report and In The Bullpen.