Recently, Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador to Denmark.
"The (Saudi) government has recalled its ambassador in Copenhagen to express its regret and protest the position of the Danish government regarding a matter that has offended Islam and Muslims," a Saudi Foreign Ministry official said on Thursday.
The kerfluffle began because of some cartoons published in a newspaper last September.
Last September. Verity at Albion's Seedlings writes
the Jyllands-Posten having published 12 cartoons of Mohammad after a Danish writer complained that he couldn’t find anyone to illustrate a book he’d written about him. The cultural editor of the newspaper put out a call to illustrators, twelve responded and the paper published the cartoons. They were pretty tame stuff, but have rocked the Muslim world because under Islamic law – which they now seek to apply in the West – renderings of Mohammad are illegal.
But wait, there's more to this story
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.
The result of all this, of course, goes beyond a simple boycott of Danish goods. Gunmen are involved
Armed militants angered by a cartoon drawing of the Prophet Muhammad published in European media surrounded EU offices in Gaza Thursday and threatened to kidnap foreigners as outrage over the caricatures spread across the Islamic world.
About a dozen gunmen with ties to the Fatah Party approached the office of the EU Commission. Three jumped on the outer wall and the rest took up positions at the entrance.....
Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank city of Nablus said they were searching apartments for foreigners from several European countries to try to kidnap them to protest the drawings.
And then there is the obligatory call for the death of infidels
The kuffar in their sustained crusade against Islam and Muslims have yet again displayed their hatred towards us this time by attacking the honour of our beloved Messenger Muhammad (saw). In September 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 10 cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad (saw) which were later republished by a Norwegian paper Magazinet. Until now both governments have refused to denounce the drawings and to condemn the publication of them.
Needless to say, it almost impossible to convince many of the Islamists (and the Saudi Government) that newspapers and Governments in the West are not one and the same entity, but I digress
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. The response of the Muslims all over the world shows us the inability to deal with such people, the kuffar are attacking our Messenger and are allowed to get away with it whilst the Muslims have no power to do anything about it. The leaders of the Muslim world have no care for the deen of Islam as they are busy cementing their seats content with their power and wealth. Where are the Muhammad ibn Maslamah’s of our ummah who will defend the honour of our beloved Messenger and rise the banner of Tawheed high
Of course it's OK to publish anti-Semitic cartoons in Arab newspapers without anyone feeling threatened. And, it seems, Muslims can publish pictures of Mohammed without a problem.
The problem here is that the cartoons too closely depict how Islamists have hijacked Islam and as I've pointed out in the past, evil hates to be laughed at.
And the funny thing is, the Arab world is reacting just like the cartoons said they would...
And that should give some pause...
