Ha ha, made you look. No, of course not.
The Swedish cartoonist at the centre of a row over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad says police have taken him to a secret location for his own safety.
[…]
The purported head of al-Qaeda in Iraq has offered $100,000 (£49,310) to anyone killing Mr Vilks.
Religion of Peace, huh? I’m beginning to seriously consider the likelihood that no religion is a true religion of peace. Even the “peaceful” ones like Buddhism have histories of holy wars.
Mr Vilks said the Swedish secret services considered the threat against him as “very serious”.
Yes, given how rational Muslims tend to be,
I can see the reason for concern. They’re certainly not a people known to fly off the handle
for no good reason; nor perform — or prepare to perform — irrational, utterly inhuman acts
in the name of furthering their cause. So if they’re pissed off, it’s got to be over something really serious. Certainly not a cartoon or anything trivial like that.
Fortunately, we in the Good Old US of A not only know better, but are on a crusade mission committed endeavor to offer God’s Gift of Freedom to the backwards Muslims, who are nothing like our good Christians.
Nope, nothing like them at all. We take our reasons for damnation seriously!
Certainly quite rational, you know — and absolutely against the idea of indoctrinating children in the language of hate and fear.
Yeah, God bless America.
19:10 on September 17th, 2007
Hard to see the point of the “satire” from newspaper descriptions: the cartoonist put Muhammad’s head on a dog? Has Muhammad been in the news recently, so that this depiction makes some witty and incisive point?
Or is it more likely that the cartoonist is simply seeking a moment of Rushdie-style fame. Were it not for the current round of Crusades, perhaps the artist would have to content himself with drawings of African-Americans smacking their oversized lips over watermelon.
I’m no fan of any religion, but I’m certainly no fan of those who insist on smearing the icons of an oppressed people.
12:34 on September 18th, 2007
I’m not sure “oppressed people” is the correct adjective for Muslims living in, say, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka or Egypt; those nations are proximally 100% Muslim, which makes them even less “oppressed” than Christians are in the US.
The only reason Iraq was even mentioned was that the AQ representative who declared the fatwah was living there — which is a direct result of US action, to be certain — but his declaration does not have anything to do with the US invasions of either Iraq or Afghanistan. Thus, again, your suggestion that it’s Poor Helpless Muslims who’ve been wronged is simply incorrect.
Muhammad hasn’t been in the news, but a hell of a lot of his followers have; and regardless of the cartoonist’s motivations, you cannot justify death threats made because a drawing.