Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism

Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism
BY DANIEL PIPES
February 7, 2006URL:
http://www.nysun.com/article/27151
The key issue at stake in the battle over the 12 Danish
cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this:
Will the West stand up for its customs and mores,
including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose
their way of life on the West?
Ultimately, there is no compromise: Westerners will
either retain their civilization, including the right to insult
and blaspheme, or not.
More specifically, will Westerners accede to a double
standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism,
Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism,
while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy immunity
from insults?
Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive
than the Danish ones.
Are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from
similar indignities?
Germany's Die Welt newspaper hinted at this issue in
an editorial:
"The protests from Muslims would be taken more
seriously if they were less hypocritical.
When Syrian television showed drama documentaries in
prime-time depicting rabbis as cannibals, the imams were
quiet."
Nor, by the way, have imams protested the stomping on
the Christian cross embedded in the Danish flag.
The deeper issue here, however, is not Muslim hypocrisy
but Islamic supremacism.
The Danish editor who published the cartoons,
Flemming Rose, explained that if Muslims insist
"that I, as a non-Muslim, should submit to their
taboos ... they're asking for my submission."
Precisely. Robert Spencer rightly called on the free world
to stand "resolutely with Denmark."
The informative Brussels Journal asserts,
"We are all Danes now."
Some governments get it:
* Norway: "We will not apologize because in a country
like Norway, which guarantees freedom of expression,
we cannot apologize for what the newspapers print,"
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg commented.
* Germany: "Why should the German government apologize
[for German papers publishing the cartoons]?
This is an expression of press freedom,"
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble said.
* France: "Political cartoons are by nature excessive.
And I prefer an excess of caricature to an excess of
censorship," Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy commented.
Other governments wrongly apologized:
* Poland: "The bounds of properly conceived freedom of
expression have been overstepped," the Prime Minister
Marcinkiewicz stated.
* Britain: "The republication of these cartoons has been
unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been
disrespectful, and it has been wrong,"
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
* New Zealand: "Gratuitously offensive," is how Trade
Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton described the cartoons.
* America: "Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner
is not acceptable,"a State Department press officer,
Janelle Hironimus, said.

Strangely, as "Old Europe" finds its backbone, the
Anglosphere quivers.
So awful was the American government reaction,
it won the endorsement of the country's leading Islamist
organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
YET THEY STILL BURNT THE
AMERICAN FLAG

This should come as no great surprise, however, for
Washington has a history of treating Islam preferentially.
On two earlier occasions it also faltered in cases of
insults concerning Muhammad.
In 1989, Salman Rushdie came under a death edict
from Ayatollah Khomeini for satirizing Muhammad in
his magical-realist novel "The Satanic Verses."
Rather than stand up for the novelist's life, President
George H.W. Bush equated "The Satanic Verses"
and the death edict, calling both "offensive."
The then secretary of state, James A. Baker III,
termed the edict merely "regrettable."
Even worse, in 1997 when an Israeli woman distributed
a poster depicting Muhammad as a pig, the American
government shamefully abandoned its protection of
free speech.
On behalf of President Clinton, a State Department
spokesman, Nicholas Burns, called the woman in
question "either sick or ... evil" and said,
"She deserves to be put on trial for these outrageous
attacks on Islam."
The State Department endorses a criminal trial for
protected speech?
Stranger yet was the context of this outburst.
As I noted at the time, having combed through weeks
of State Department briefings, I "found nothing
approaching this vituperative language in reference to
the horrors that took place in Rwanda, where hundreds
of thousands lost their lives. To the contrary,
Mr. Burns was throughout cautious and diplomatic."
Western governments should take a crash course on
Islamic law and the historically abiding Muslim
imperative to subjugate non-Muslim peoples.
They might start by reading the forthcoming book
by Efraim Karsh, "Islamic Imperialism:
A History" (Yale).
Peoples who would stay free must stand unreservedly
with Denmark.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the
Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures
(Transaction Publishers).


THANK YOU MR PIPES- YOU SPEAK FOR ME!!!!
I WILL NOT BOW TO THE MUSLIM RELIGION
THEY MUST BE ON EQUAL FOOTING TO MINE.
view cartoons below:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004413.htm