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Ministers from 17 Muslim countries including
Turkey
and
Bosnia
urged
Denmark
's government to punish Jyllands-Posten
for what they described as an "offence to Islam".
Thousands
of Palestinians demonstrated this week in the Gaza Strip, burning
Danish flags and portraits of the Danish prime minister.
Saudi Arabia
and
Syria
recalled their ambassador to
Denmark
, while
Libya
said it was closing its embassy in
Copenhagen
, and
Iraq
, the country in which the Danish people are fighting to give them
democracy, summoned the Danish envoy to condemn the cartoons.
The Arab League and countries of the Organization of
the Islamic Conference (OIC) criticized the Danish Government for its
refusal to take action against the newspaper and condemned it of
“intolerance”.
Arla Foods,
one of Europe's largest dairy producers, said that its customers
in Saudi Arabia appeared to have stopped selling its dairy produce and
had begun a boycott of Danish goods.
The incident hurt the Danish business and workers
were laid off forcing The Confederation of Danish Industries to appeal Jyllands-Posten
to print an apology for having commissioned the drawings.
The Muslim media kept fueling the fire. Aljazeera was up in arms and in an angry article entitled “Has
defaming Prophets become Freedom of speech?”, wrote: “Religion is
people [sic] - People's ideologies and beliefs should be given great
respect. And what journalists call ‘Freedom of expression’ should not
by any means hurt the feelings of people; from any religions or
sects" And:
"In order to allow ‘Freedom of Speech’,
governments and organizations must first understand what freedom of speech
is,” elucidated Aljazeera patronizingly, the concept of democracy for
the rest of us who according to them don’t know its meaning.
Religion is not people. This is sophism at best.
Maybe it’s time that these “grand gurus of democracy” descend from
their high horses and take a closer look in the mirror to see how Muslims
treat the non-Muslims wherever they are the majority.
In
Saudi Arabia
, even the possession
of a copy of the Bible is a crime and if Christian workers are caught
meeting in their own homes praying with fellow Christians they could
go to jail and be deported.
Saudi Arabia
, bases its constitution on the Quran and the sayings of Muhammad. Public
practice of any other religion is banned.
In
Saudi Arabia
a
court sentenced a teacher to 40 months in prison and 750 lashes for
discussing the Bible in the classroom and for telling his students that
the Jews were right. He was taken to court by his colleagues and students
and was flogged in public charged with promoting a “dubious ideology and
mocking religion”.
Aljazeera concluded: “The Islamic religion does not
allow offensive remarks by both Muslims and Non-Muslims.”
What rights Muslims should have on non-Muslims to
allow or disallow them anything? Isn’t that preposterous? Also the claim
that Muslims do not make offensive remarks of other faiths falls flat on
its face when we read how Muhammad mocked the religion of the Meccans and
at the first opportunity, broke his treaty with them; seized their temple,
Ka'ba and destroyed their idols. What right did he have to do so? Isn't
this violence? He even disparaged the Jews calling them apes and swine,
and the Christians whom he called idol-worshippers for believing in
Trinity.
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