Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Think at your own risk.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Who incited the riots?

From the Times UK:

Crowds gathered in Bangladesh and in cities across Pakistan, where the national parliament unanimously passed a resolution condemning the drawings. "I have been hurt, grieved and I am angry," said President Pervez Musharraf. Last November, Islamic extremists in Islamabad issued death threats against the authors of the cartoons. Newspaper offices are frequently attacked in Pakistan for perceived slights against Islam.

Across the Middle East, Danish dairy produce has been boycotted by an estimated 50,000 shops since Saudi Arabian clerics asked shopkeepers to remove the items from their shelves. As Friday prayers ended in the region, thousands took to the streets to burn flags and threaten violence.

"We must tell Europeans, we can live without you. But you cannot live without us," said Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a leading imam in Qatar. "We can buy from China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia... We will not be humiliated."

The Palestinian Territories have been alive with marches and unrest since the victory of the Islamist group, Hamas, in last week's parliamentary elections.

Today a week of anti-Danish and anti-European protests reached its climax with 50,000 people attending a rally organised by the group, which is yet to take power. Danish goods were burnt and the crowd chanted: "Let the hands that drew be severed!"

Western diplomats have already been forced to abandon their missions in the Gaza Strip after reports of gunmen searching hotels for Europeans, declaring them legitimate targets. The Danish Red Cross has pulled out workers from Yemen and Gaza City after they received death threats.

Arab newspaper editorials held no trace of the ambivalence that led a Jordanian newspaper, al-Shihan, to print three of the cartoons yesterday. Instead, Jihad Momani, the newspaper's editor who was fired for his decision to publish, issued an apology: "Oh I ask God to forgive me and I announce to everyone my deep regret for the gross mistake I have committed in Shihan without intention, which I fell into in my enthusiasm to defend our religion and the life of the Prophet," he said.

By this afternoon, London also was witnessing furious demonstrations. After a small protest at the BBC television centre last night to complain about glimpses of the cartoons in news bulletins and on Newsnight, hundreds of Muslims gathered in Regent's Park to march to the Danish Embassy on Sloane Street.

Placards reading: "Behead the one who insults the prophet" and "Free speech go to hell!" were carried by the protesters. Bushra Varakat, a 26-year-old student from Egham, Surrey, said: "This is our prophet, he did a lot of things for humankind, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

"We don’t know why these silly people use these cartoons unless they were showing how much they hate us. We have to defend our prophet otherwise Allah will punish us. We will not accept this ridicule."

This uproar seems to be as much about the impotent rage of the Muslim world -- which has been powerless to stop Western countries from passing laws banning headscarves (France), invading Iraq, pressuring Syria and Iran, etc. Is that what's really going on here?

Also, if these cartoons were published in late September of last year, why did the controversy only erupt this week? Who's behind the incitement, and why now?

Here's a partial answer cobbled together (not in the order they put it in) from Wikipedia:

On October 19, ten ambassadors from Islamic countries, including Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, as well as the head of the Palestinian delegation in Denmark, sent a letter to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen requesting a meeting and asking him to distance himself from alleged "hate speech", including remarks by MP Louise Frevert, Culture Minister of Denmark Brian Mikkelsen, and the Radio Holger station. [7] Rasmussen declined, saying that the government could not interfere with the right to free speech, but said that cases of blasphemy and discrimination could be tried before the courts [8], a reaction essentially seen as a snub by the Muslims, according to the International Herald Tribune[9].

On December 29, the Arab League criticised the Danish government for its handling of the affair. The Danish foreign minister Per Stig Møller responded, saying that the situation had been misrepresented. ...
...On January 10, a marginal Norwegian Christian magazine, Magazinet, printed the drawings after getting authorisation from Jyllands-Posten. Major newspapers in Norway had printed facsimiles from Jyllands-Posten and reproduced all the caricatures in their online versions; a few days earlier, the Swedish newspaper Expressen had printed two of the drawings in conjunction with an article discussing the event. [23]. However, it was the Magazinet printing that led to a great debate in Norway. A Norwegian man made a threat against the lives of the people at the magazine, but later claimed, when faced by the police, that it was just a prank. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry sent a letter to their ambassadors in the Middle East stating that one of the pillars of the Norwegian society is freedom of speech, but they expressed regret that Magazinet did not respect Muslims' beliefs. [24] ...

In late January 2006, Saudi Arabia and Libya recalled their ambassadors for consultations - a traditional message of diplomatic displeasure - and Libya announced that it would close its embassy in Denmark [10]. Pakistan's ambassador urged the Danish prime minister to penalise the cartoonists. In Bahrain, MPs called for an extraordinary session of parliament to discuss the cartoons, while protestors set Danish dairy products ablaze. Al Menbar MP Mohammed Khaled has demanded that Arab leaders take action: "We are stunned by the silence of the Arab leaders. They don't tolerate any criticism against them, yet allow others to insult the Prophet."[11]

Demonstrations against the cartoons took place in several Arab countries and the flags of Denmark and Norway were burned in streets across the Middle East. The controversy produced labour strikes and protests in Pakistan, and mass demonstrations in Baghdad in Iraq. In Palestine, thousands of people participated in demonstrations and gunmen in the Gaza Strip threatened violence against any Scandinavians in the area. The European Union's Gaza offices were raided by 15 masked gunmen from the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. They demanded apologies from Denmark and Norway, but left 30 minutes later without any shots being fired or injuries caused. [12]

The Danish foreign ministry advised Danes to take care when travelling in Muslim countries. At the same time the Danish government learned that a fatwa had been declared against the Danish troops stationed in Iraq. The government responded by heightening security for its troops. [13] ...
...On February 1, an Icelandic newspaper published six of the twelve drawings, claiming support for the freedom of speech. [26] ...

On February 2, Palestinian gunmen shut down the EU headquarters in Gaza, in protest of the Jyllands-Posten drawings. According to CNN, "Masked members of the militant groups Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinians' former ruling party, Fatah, fired bullets into the air, and a man read the group's demands....The gunmen left a notice on the EU office's door that the building would remain closed until Europeans apologize to Muslims, many of whom consider the cartoons offensive." [16]. This is the second attack the groups have made on the EU headquarters in Gaza. One hostage, an unnamed German teacher, was taken and later released the same day.

In response to the publication of the drawings, the UK Islamist group Al Ghurabaa publish an article on their website titled, "Kill those who insult the Prophet Muhammad". The article states, "The insulting of the Messenger Muhammad (saw) is something that the Muslims cannot and will not tolerate and the punishment in Islam for the one who does so is death. This is the sunnah of the prophet and the verdict of Islam upon such people, one that any Muslim is able execute."[17]

And more info, including ties to some recent deadly incidents against Christian targets in Iraq:

Violence against Christians in the Middle East
On January 29 six churches in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Kirkuk were targeted by car bombs, killing 13-year-old worshipper Fadi Raad Elias.[27] No militants claimed to be retaliating for the pictures, nor is this the first time Iraqi churches have been bombed; but many Assyrians in Iraq claim "Westerners should not give wild statements [as] everyone can attack us [in response]" [28]. Also on January 29, a Muslim Cleric in the Iraqi city of Mosul issued a fatwa stating "expel the Crusaders and infidels from the streets, schools, and institutions because they have offended the person of the prophet." [29] It has been reported that Muslim students beat up a Christian student at Mosul University in response to the fatwa on the same day[29]. On February 2, Palestinians in the West Bank handed out a leaflet signed by a Fatah militant group and Islamic Jihad stating "Churches in Gaza could come under attack". [30]

So was it the Christian paper's reprinting of the cartoons that touched all this off? Maybe, although Iraqi insurgents have gone after Christian targets before... but these bombings came amid a spurt of fresh violence that also led to the injuring of two ABC News journalists, Bob Woodruff and John Vogt.

Coincidences? Or insurgent tactics? Throw in the fake cartoons peddled to the Muslim world by Islamist clerics from Denmark, and this sounds like a scheme to draw ordinary Muslims into a global insurgency. (But then again I'm a tin foil hatter...) And now for some wise words from a London cleric, also from the Times article linked at the top of this post:

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, condemned the images too, but urged British Muslims to resist the entreaties of extremists seeking to hijack the controversy.

"There may be elements that would want to exploit the genuine sense of anguish and hurt among British Muslims about the manner in which the prophet has been vilified to pursue their own mischievous agenda," he said. "We would caution all British Muslims to not allow themselves to be provoked."

Hm... who would do that kind of provoking? Seems like the Counterterrorism Blog is asking the same questions:

One issue that puzzles many Danes is the timing of this outburst. The cartoons were published in September: Why have the protests erupted from Muslims worldwide only now? The person who knows the answer to this question is Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, a man that the Washington Post has recently profiled as “one of Denmark's most prominent imams.”

Last November, Abu Laban, a 60-year-old Palestinian who had served as translator and assistant to top Gamaa Islamiya leader Talaal Fouad Qassimy during the mid-1990s and has been connected by Danish intelligence to other Islamists operating in the country, put together a delegation that traveled to the Middle East to discuss the issue of the cartoons with senior officials and prominent Islamic scholars. The delegation met with Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sunni Islam’s most influential scholar, Yusuf al Qaradawi. "We want to internationalize this issue so that the Danish government will realize that the cartoons were insulting, not only to Muslims in Denmark, but also to Muslims worldwide," said Abu Laban.

On its face, it would appear as if nothing were wrong. However, the Danish Muslim delegation showed much more than the 12 cartoons published by Jyllands Posten. In the booklet it presented during its tour of the Middle East, the delegation included other cartoons of Mohammed that were highly offensive, including one where the Prophet has a pig face. But these additional pictures were NOT published by the newspaper, but were completely fabricated by the delegation and inserted in the booklet (which has been obtained and made available to me by Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet). The delegation has claimed that the differentiation was made to their interlocutors, even though the claim has not been independently verified. In any case, the action was a deliberate malicious and irresponsible deed carried out by a notorious Islamist who in another situation had said that “mockery against Mohamed deserves death penalty.” And in a quintessential exercise in taqiya, Abu Laban has praised the boycott of Danish goods on al Jazeera, while condemning it on Danish TV.