Cartoon Crisis 2006

WED 2006-FEB-01

seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 18:35:47French and German newspapers republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on Wednesday in what they called a defense of freedom of expression, sparking fresh anger from Muslims. The drawings have divided opinion within Europe and the Middle East since a Danish newspaper first printed them in September. Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet to prevent idolatry...

THE CARTOONIST FATWA SCALE

The cartoons below are rated 1 to 5 on their degree of the cartoonist's self-endangerment. There is no rating zero because we assume that any cartoonist who even makes the most oblique reference to the any aspect of the cartoon crisis is going to cause someone somewhere to be offended to the point of murder.

FRI 2006-FEB-03

news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:42:00Islamic tradition bans depictions of the Prophet or Allah. Eight commentators give their views on the controversy to the BBC... "We think we are living in a secular society where even religion can be satirised" Roger Koppel, editor of the German newspaper Die Welt... jordantimes.com/ ... 11:25:09Jordan... Chief editor of Shihan Jihad Momani was sacked by the Arab Printers, the publishing company, which also pulled the paper from newsstands and opened an investigation into the issue... "The company was shocked that Shihan republished the insulting caricatures and it strongly condemns such an irresponsible behaviour," the Arab Printers said in a statement. It vowed "severe measures against people whose implication is proven." The government also strongly condemned the newspaper's move...

Dan Wasserman tries too hard and misses the mark on many levels

Tony Auth skewers the moral hypocrisy. Bonus points for the depiction in the paper of the bomb-turban cartoon.

SUN 2006-FEB-05

news.telegraph.co.uk/ ... 09:07:22The Conservatives last night called on the police to arrest militant Muslims who threatened Westerners with violence during protests in London... David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the police should take action against what were clearly offences of incitement to murder...
abcnews.go.com/ ... 08:49:54Syrians set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies on Saturday as protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.... Iran... said it was reviewing trade ties with countries that have published such caricatures... no one was hurt as the embassy was closed... Demonstrators also set the Norwegian embassy ablaze... Police fired teargas to disperse protesters there and also used water hoses to hold back others from storming the French embassy. Riot police were deployed to protect the U.S. mission... [I guess they were all just anxious to PROVE THE CARTOONIST RIGHT!] "The principle of diplomatic relations is that diplomats can work safely and the fact that this has been broken is extremely serious," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference in Oslo...

Matt Davies doesn't quite hit the target

Doug Marlette has a dark take on the success of the protestors. Is that supposed to be Chamberlain?

MON 2006-FEB-06

Wayne Stayskal manages a mildly funny angle

Chan Lowe seems ambiguous on the value of liberty of expression

Walt Handelsman meekly points up the absurdity of the "threat" of cartoons.

Ted Rall, in his inimitable marvelous manic rage, brings it on home. (This gets only one Cartoonist Fatwa point, but the scale does not encompass Ted's home-grown foes).

Doug Marlette takes on the moral hypocrisy. Extra points for You-Know-Who.

Stuart Carlson, while seeming to demean the Danish cartoonists, nevertheless well slams the moral hypocrisy.

TUE 2006-FEB-07

Link Lost ... 12:16:36Iran's most popular daily newspaper, Hamshahri, is set to initiate a Holocaust cartoon contest in what it says is a response to cartoons disparaging Islam's prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper. "This will be an international cartoon competition on the topic of the Holocaust," said Farid Mortazawi, the paper's graphic editor. The editor added the newspaper intends to fight back by claiming the publication of Holocaust cartoons is done in the name of freedom of expression... [If they'll also tolerate OTHERS' freedom of expression, then fine! Somehow, that doesn't seem to be the mood of most of these protesters, though....] worldnetdaily.com/ ... 12:15:02A school in the United Kingdom has banned traditional hot cross buns for fear the religious symbol drawn on the top of each roll might offend some students... upi.com/ ... 12:13:26A Moscow museum has announced it will exhibit the entire series of cartoons of Mohammed that have caused riots throughout the Islamic world... cnn.com/ ... 12:13:15Afghan police are reported to have killed four protesters in the latest violence to erupt over cartoons... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 12:12:04(The people interviewed for this article did not wish to be named.) The response in Pakistan to the controversy over Danish caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad has been relatively measured and restrained, taking many observers by surprise... an inconsequential condemnation from the upper house of parliament, echoed by President Musharraf, and diplomatic protest by the government to various European countries. There have been some demonstrations by religious groups - nearly all poorly attended - besides a few newspaper editorials urging the West to show restraint in such matters... "Muslim leadership the world over has historically been the most cynical manipulator of Islam - and this is especially true of Pakistan," says one analyst. "Injured religious sentiment has seldom translated into public unrest unless there was political mileage to be gained from it by some vested interest," he argues... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:57:52Nato has sent British reinforcements to a riot-hit Afghan town after crowds protesting at cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad attacked peacekeepers... abcnews.go.com/ ... 11:52:24Street protests sparked by the cartoons that caricatured the prophet Muhammad in European newspapers continue from New Zealand to Afghanistan, where this morning protesters attacked a Norwegian military base... 14-year-old boy has reportedly been killed in clashes with police in Somalia... A European Muslim group has already published on its Web site a cartoon of Adolf Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. "If it is the time to break taboos and cross all the red lines," it explains, "we certainly do not want to fall behind..." [If they'll also tolerate OTHERS' freedom of expression, then fine! Somehow, that doesn't seem to be the mood of most of these protesters, though....] worldnetdaily.com/ ... 11:31:11The burning this past weekend of Danish government offices in Damascus and Beirut in protest of newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad were directed by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in part using undercover soldiers acting as rioters, Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt charged today during an exclusive WorldNetDaily interview... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 11:23:45Two Jordanian newspaper editors who published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have been arrested. Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi are accused of insulting religion under Jordan's press and publications law... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 11:23:13Twelve Danish cartoonists whose pictures sparked such outcry have gone into hiding under round-the-clock protection, fearing for their lives. The cartoonists, many of whom had reservations about the pictures, have been shocked by how the affair has escalated into a global “clash of civilisations”. They have since tried, unsuccessfully, to stop them being reprinted... The cartoonists’ names were originally printed in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. Flemming Rose, the paper’s cultural editor, invited 25 newspaper cartoonists to draw a picture of Muhammad “how they saw him”, after a children’s author complained that cartoonists would only dare illustrate a book he was writing on the life of Muhammad if they could be anonymous. Twelve cartoonists responded, had their pictures printed in September, and were paid 800 Danish krone (£73) each... “It felt a little like a lose-lose situation. If I said no, I was a coward who contributes to self-censorship. If I said yes, I became an irresponsible hate monger against Islam,” one of the cartoonists said... Another said: “I was actually angry when I first received the letter [from Jyllands-Posten]. I thought it was a really bad idea. At first I didn’t want to participate, but then I talked it over with some friends from the Middle East, and they thought I should do it.”...

Doug Marlette uncharacteristically seems to weasel again, but with an interesting twist, anyway.

Tony Auth isn't thinking originally in this one, but something about that simple remark (aka command) of the Almighty makes it laugh-out-loud.

Tom Toles perfectly gets it, on every level. Not the funniest but the best-pointed.

Dan Wasserman gets it right, too, and I think I'd call this one my favorite as far as cartooning self-reference regarding this crisis.

WED 2006-FEB-08

pcpro.co.uk/ ... 10:10:10Gangs of pro-Muslim computer hackers have unleashed a withering cyber attack on Danish and Western websites in the past week... The number of Danish websites alone - those carrying a '.dk' suffix - knocked offline in the past week numbered 578 between 30 January and 6 February... 'The number is nearly doubling every day,'... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:09:36One of three especially inflammatory but undocumented Muhammad images distributed by a Danish imam as an example of an "anti-Muslim environment" in the European country turns out to be a poorly reproduced copy of an Associated Press photo taken at a French pig-squealing contest... timesonline.co.uk/ ... 10:04:57The children’s book about the Koran that led to rioting across the world against the cartoons of Muhammad has become something of a bestseller. The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Muhammad, by Kåre Bluitgen, illustrated with ten pictures of Muhammad, has been reprinted twice since it was published two weeks ago in Denmark... today.reuters.com/ ... 10:02:53A French satirical weekly reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday and published one of its own on its front page, further angering Muslim groups which say the caricatures are blasphemous... iranmania.com/ ... 09:58:02Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday a "Zionist conspiracy" was to blame for the row over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, in his first reaction to the controversy, AFP reported. "According to their (the West's) freedom of speech, any kind of doubt or denial about the myth of the killing of Jews is banned, but insulting the feelings of more than 1.5 billion Muslims is allowed," he said... chron.com/ ... 09:57:37On this issue, the long-standing chasm between the West and the world of Islam is getting wider. It may even be heading toward a "civilizational war" like the one Samuel Huntington (wrongly) described as occurring in the early 1990s in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order... forbes.com/ ... 09:53:31Members of Afghanistan's top Islamic organization on Wednesday called for an end to violent protests against drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, a day after three demonstrators died in clashes with international peacekeepers. But protests continued across the country. Afghan police fired into a crowd of rioters to stop them from marching on a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, officials said. At least 10 people were wounded. Senior Afghan officials said al-Qaida and the Taliban could be exploiting anger over the cartoons to incite violence, which spread to at least six cities on Tuesday... bloomberg.com/ ... 09:52:35Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen... "We are facing a growing global crisis...." Threats against the Nordic country from Muslim extremists prompted opposition parties to express support for the Prime Minister... A delegation of Danish Muslims which visited the Middle East last month misinformed its hosts by claiming Danish media showed the prophet with a pig's snout and that the Koran would be burned as part of an anti-Muslim campaign, the Danish government has said... iht.com/ ... 09:51:09the conflict over the cartoons has pushed both sides across an unexpected threshold, where they view each other with miscomprehension and suspicion... "It is a crunch time for Europe and Islam," he said, "it is an extremely dangerous moment," one that could lead to "a downward spiral of mutual perceptions, and not just between extremists." [javascript req]

David Horsey is too close to current reality (see Marlette's "Life has become a cartoon" above).

Dick Locher in one of many cartoonist self-references

Wayne Stayskal in one of many cartoonist self-references, with a domestic politics twist. Even funnier in light of the many "Arkancides"...

Don Wright in one of many cartoonist self-references, but funny

Jack Ohman in one of many cartoonist self-references. Not sure how to take the self-revealing aspect of this one (substitute Jack Ohman for Al Schlub), but it does speak for many, and to the issue of terror used to suppress the free expression of ideas.

Lalo Alcaraz seems to believe something good has been done by the cartoonists, somewhat opposite of the take many have on this.

Matt Davies isn't quite right. In reality, most cartoonists are controlled, by the editors and publishers. (Let's ask Ted Rall.)

Ben Sargent best explains civilization. Let's hope that fellow's listening!

THU 2006-FEB-09

aftenposten.no/ ... 10:48:05The web site www.sorrynorwaydenmark.com has attracted attention as a voice of moderation from the Muslim world... The web site argues that the images of Arab and Muslim wrath at the publication of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed seen around the world are not representative of what Muslims at large feel, and apologizes for and condemns acts of violence against Denmark, Norway and the European Union... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:47:37The United Nations and European Union have reached agreement to issue a joint statement condemning cartoon "insults to Islam..." [?? If you didn't do it, why would you apologize? Is this part of that group-think disease?] worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:46:44The Danish imam who helped instigate a protest against satirical drawings of Muhammad that has escalated into deadly riots worldwide supports al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and told Muslim worshipers not to grieve victims of 9-11, according to news reports. Imam Ahmed Abu Laban, leader of the Islamic Society of Denmark, said in his Friday sermon days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that he shed no tears for the victims, reported the Israeli daily Maariv. The Danish paper Kristeligt Dagblad said in a Sept. 19, 2001, report that in his sermon the Friday after the attacks, Abu Laban praised the Taliban as people who were trying to build a nation in Afghanistan. Maariv noted Muslims in Denmark joined in jubilant celebrations over the 9-11 attacks... worldnetdaily.com/ ... 10:46:05While Muslims across the world have rioted in the past week against countries whose newspapers have published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, there was no uproar when the same caricatures were prominently displayed in an Arab newspaper four months ago... apnews.myway.com/ ... 10:43:45Police killed four people Wednesday as Afghans enraged over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad marched on a U.S. military base in a volatile southern province, directing their anger not against Europe but America. The U.S. base was targeted because the United States "is the leader of Europe and the leading infidel in the world," said Sher Mohammed, a 40-year-old farmer who suffered a gunshot wound while taking part in the demonstration in the city of Qalat. "They are all the enemy of Islam. They are occupiers in our country and must be driven out," Mohammed said... [Hey... can we draw a cartoon about a Mohammed who is NOT "the" Mohammed?] news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:39:47Almost 1,000 Danish websites have been defaced by Islamic hackers protesting about controversial cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. The attacks typically replace home pages with pro-Islam messages and condemn the publication of the images... seattlepi.nwsource.com/ ... 10:34:50As rage over the caricatures continues across the Muslim world, there are growing questions whether governments like Syria and Iran's hard-line clerical regime and extremist groups like the Taliban are fanning the outrage... Most have been non-violent. In Egypt, demonstrators - including ones from the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood - have gone out of their way to insist they are peaceful and aren't angry at the Danish people, only the newspaper and the government for not taking a strong enough stance against the insult. But in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon the protests have been more violent. Iran's government has been the most overt in characterizing the drawings as an organized effort to attack Islam... In Syria, crowds set fire to Danish and Norwegian missions in Damascus. In a country where the government has absolute control, few believe the protesters could have pulled off such a brazen act without tacit government consent. The next day, state-run media said the violence would not have happened "if Denmark had apologized" for the drawings... web.israelinsider.com/ ... 10:31:53The Danish editor behind the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that ignited deadly riots in the Muslim world said Wednesday he's trying to coordinate with an Iranian paper soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust... "...we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them..."
"I do not regret it," Rose said. "I think it is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt at a discotheque Friday night. In that sense, in our culture, if you're wearing a short skirt, that does not necessarily mean you invite everybody to have sex with you. As is the case with these cartoons, if you make a cartoon, make fun of religion, make fun of religious figures, that does not imply that you humiliate or denigrate or marginalize a religion..." news.monstersandcritics.com/ ... 10:30:05Web sites have in recent days been set up in Denmark and elsewhere offering people a chance to send an apology to Muslims offended by Jyllands-Posten's publication... [?? If you didn't do it, why would you apologize? Is this part of that group-think disease?] washingtonpost.com/ ... 00:24:44"I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday. "The world ought to call them on it..."
"We reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in a free press," Bush said... highlighted a shift in White House strategy to focusing on the killings and destruction during Muslim protests in several nations -- in contrast to earlier statements that included criticism of the provocative drawings...

Dick Locher also turns the issue to domestic politics

Pat Oliphant isn't going to let you know where he stands, but he gets full Fatwa points just in case.

Ted Rall is so out there! He has leftish presuppositions, but mostly he's like Mad Magazine of old, anyone is fair game, and almost always excellently skewered. Rall is free to go in any direction, not just a particular hard slant on political or current events, as with the excellent self-referential cartoon above, and this sci-fi extrapolation of the current cartoon crisis, featuring his hilarious recurring Generalissimo Bush.

FRI 2006-FEB-10

news.independent.co.uk/ ... 09:52:43A summit of Muslim nations held in Mecca in December may have played a key role in stoking outraged protests across the Islamic world against a series of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed. A dossier of the cartoons, which was compiled by Danish Muslims, was handed around the sidelines of the meeting, attended by 57 Islamic nations including leaders such as Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Saudi King, Abdullah... ww4report.com/ ... 09:34:07The debate raging across Europe, blinded by its discourse of a humorless Islam versus a playful Freedom, is unwilling and unable to see the cartoons for what they are: hateful and racist... [Well-written, but desperately blank on the real concepts...] theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... 09:32:01Many who want to report the facts are unable or unwilling to do so properly, for fear that they too will be targeted. The whole affair is beginning to resemble the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, in which an exasperated Jewish official attempts to referee a stoning and ends up getting stoned himself... These events should be all the more resonant now for the fact that we are approaching the anniversary of another assault on civil society by a notable theocratic fascist, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. On February 14, 1989, Khomeini issued a condemnation of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. His fatwa declared the book to be blasphemous and called for the murder, not only of its author (an Indian Muslim living in Britain), but of "all those involved in its publication". Since then, the book's Italian translator has been seriously injured in a vicious attack and its Japanese translator stabbed to death. Rushdie himself was forced into hiding... These events should be all the more resonant now for the fact that we are approaching the anniversary of another assault on civil society by a notable theocratic fascist, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. On February 14, 1989, Khomeini issued a condemnation of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. His fatwa declared the book to be blasphemous and called for the murder, not only of its author (an Indian Muslim living in Britain), but of "all those involved in its publication". Since then, the book's Italian translator has been seriously injured in a vicious attack and its Japanese translator stabbed to death. Rushdie himself was forced into hiding... today.reuters.co.uk/ ... 09:25:26A Palestinian militant group threatened on Friday to "burn the ground" beneath nations that continue to publish cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammad, saying apologies from governments were not enough. In another signal that the row is not about to die down, a prominent Saudi Arabian cleric in Islam's holiest city of Mecca called for those who deride the Prophet to be punished... [Gonna burn down every free nation in the world, they better get busier than they are....]