Friday, February 10, 2006

Understanding the Roots of the Prophet Mohammed Cartoon Scandal

Chris Bollyn has posted another article on the Prophet Mohammed cartoon scandal.

From http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=85229

MIAMI, Florida – After Danish embassies in three Muslim nations were attacked and set alight by angry mobs protesting the anti-Islamic cartoons published in a Danish newspaper the mainstream media turned its attention to the controversial images and the violent reactions they provoked. Invariably, however, the controlled press overlooked the important fact that the offensive images were commissioned and published by a Danish colleague of the Neo-Con Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes.

The anti-Muslim cartoon scandal has turned out to be a major step forward for the Zionist Neo-Cons and their long-planned "clash of civilizations," the artificially constructed conflict designed to pit the so-called Christian West against the Islamic world.

"The rioting that has erupted across the Middle East…is a predictable if overwrought reaction to what now seems like a calculated offense against Islam," The Miami Herald wrote in its lead editorial on February 7.

"It is not necessary to reprint the offending cartoons for U.S. readers to understand the issue," The Miami Herald, a Knight-Ridder paper, opined wisely. "A religious taboo was violated, and those involved knew full well what they were doing. The incident fell all too neatly into the hands of those who would exacerbate tensions between Europe and the Muslim world."

Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten (JP), is the person who commissioned and published the offensive cartoons knowing full well that the images would exacerbate tensions between Europe and the Islamic nations. Rose is a colleague of the Neo-Con Daniel Pipes who visited the Philadelphia office of Pipes' Zionist website called Middle East Forum in 2004.

Rose then penned a sympathetic article about Pipes entitled "The Threat from Islamism," which promoted his extreme anti-Islamic views without even mentioning the fact that Pipes is a rabid Zionist extremist.

Pipes, the son of the Polish-born Jewish Neo-Con professor Richard E. Pipes, is a Zionist of the most extreme sort, who says that the Palestinian people need to have a "change of heart" that should be brought about after being utterly defeated by the Israeli military.

"How is a change of heart achieved? It is achieved by an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat," Pipes said in 2003. "The Palestinians need to be defeated even more than Israel needs to defeat them."

After three Danish embassies were attacked by angry Muslim mobs, CNN turned to Daniel Pipes, its carefully chosen Middle East analyst, to explain the cause of the widespread anger in the Muslim world. Rather than discuss the origin of the anti-Muslim images, which had provoked the protests, Pipes blamed radical clerics for having circulated the offensive images.

CNN failed to mention that Pipes and Rose are Zionist Neo-Con colleagues while Pipes blamed Muslims for the violent protests, saying that "extremists" had used the offensive cartoons published by Rose "to rally their people and become more agitatedly anti-Western."


This theory of a deliberate provocation of Islam is confirmed in an article on the World Socialist Website which looks at this affair.

From http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/denm-f10.shtml

Last autumn Jyllands-Posten assigned 40 prominent Danish caricaturists to draw the Prophet Muhammad. Twelve responded and the results were published on September 30. The project was deliberately designed to provoke.

According to the cultural editor of the newspaper, Flemming Rose, it was aimed at “testing the limits of self-censorship in Danish public opinion” when it comes to Islam and Muslims. He added: “In a secular society, Muslims have to live with the fact of being ridiculed, scoffed at and made to look ridiculous.”

When the anticipated reaction by the Muslim community failed to arise, the newspaper continued its campaign, determined to create a full-scale scandal. After a week had gone by without protest, journalists turned on Danish Islamic religious leaders who were well known for their fundamentalist views and demanded: “Why don’t you protest?” Eventually, the latter reacted and alerted their co-thinkers in the Middle East.


But before the cartoons were published attempts at incitement were being made by Jyllands-Posten.

Apparently,
In the 1990s the decidedly conservative paper increasingly developed into a mouthpiece for openly xenophobic, right-wing forces. Nearly a quarter of the editorial board was dismissed, and the quality of the paper sank as its aggressiveness rose.

Shortly before the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, Jyllands-Posten ran a headline reading, “Islam is the Most Belligerent.” The newspaper ran an exposé about an alleged Muslim death-list of Jewish names—until it emerged that the whole thing was a fabrication.

One year ago the editor-in-chief resigned because the newspaper carried a report, in the midst of an election campaign, alleging the systematic abuse of welfare rights by asylum-seekers. The sensational charges were published against his will.


We now also learn that Jyllands-Posten will not publish the cartoons of the holohoax commissioned by an Iranian newspaper.

It looks to me like a deliberate provocation and incitement, and Islam fell for it.

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