The Cartoon War Continues As Does War Against Free Speech

Has Sweeden shut down Swedish websites that were hosting the infamous cartoons? It certainly seems that way.

Michelle Malkin, as usual, has a huge roundup of the worldwide jihad against free speech.

The New York Times has an interesting conversation with Salman Rushdie, who claims that while he supports free speech, hasn't been particularly outspoken on the rioting spurred by the cartoons.

No, I mean, I think tempers are very high at the moment and all kinds of stuff is getting said. I just think that the moment you resort to violence or the threat of violence, you lose the argument. You know, it's one thing to say I don't like what you said to me and I find it rude and offensive, but the moment you threaten violence in return, you've taken it to another level, where you lose whatever credibility you had."

What's your opinion of the cartoons themselves?

"I think many of them are extremely tame," Mr. Rushdie said. "Clearly the most problematic one is the one which has the bomb turban. The only one that I thought was mildly funny was the one about running out of virgins. But on the whole I thought they were a very tame bunch. But, you know, it's not about the content of the turbans, it's long since left that plane. They've just become a totem."

Does all this make you personally worried, more than you were, say, a week ago?

"I hope not, you know. What can I tell you? What I think is more important than my personal worry is that the thing needs to calm down fast, because people have started dying and that seems — apart from tragic — it seems absurd."

The fact is that Rushdie is right about the tameness of the original 12 cartoons. It's the hoaxed and bogus cartoons that the Danish imans began associating with the original 12, along with the state sponsorship of the rioting that has ratcheted up the fight. They didn't get much of a reaction when they were first published in Egypt or (here) or Denmark, but the imans and the Syrian and Iranian governments found a useful purpose for them.

UPDATE:
Should it really surprise anyone that the Danish iman who was behind the cartoon intifada - getting them spread throughout the Middle East and getting the attention of Islamists in Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia was a disciple associate of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman? If that name sounds familiar, it's because it should. He was the blind cleric behind the original WTC bombing, and who exhorted his minions to jihad against the West and the US. He's serving life in prison for his activities.

Secret reports by Danish and Italian intelligence services have linked Laban to the al Qaeda-connected Egyptian terror group Gaamat al-Islamiya. Gaamat's spiritual leader, the blind cleric Abdel-Rahman, is now serving a life sentence for directing the terror cells that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and plotted to destroy other New York landmarks.

Lorenzo Vidino, an expert on Islamic militancy from the Investigative Project, told The Post that Abu Laban first surfaced on the security radar screen in Denmark in the early 1990s.

He and his boss, Talaat Fouad Qassimy, are believed to have hosted Rahman at a Danish mosque, Vidino said.

In 2003, Abu Laban joined scores of radical clerics in an international political initiative against the United States and Israel spearheaded by Saudi cleric Safar al Hawail, a mentor of Osama bin Laden, according to Rita Katz, head of the terrorism research group the SITE Institute.

UPDATE:
Modified my previous comments on Rahman's relationship with Laban. We do not yet know whether he was a disciple of Rahman, but hosting Rahman suggests they appear to be indeed fellow travellers in the militant Islamic circles.

UPDATE:
Krauthammer, as picked up by The Jawa Report, has a pretty good piece on the fallacy of moderate Islam - that those who are silent in opposing the anti-Semitism and do not face down the extremists in their own religion are not moderates, but rather silently assenting to the extremists' takeover of their entire religion.

What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity....

The Jawa Report also notes that the Danish editor who commissioned the original 12 cartoons has been sent on leave. Vinnie seems to think that the assault on free speech isn't as big a deal as say Michelle Malkin thinks, but I have to disagree with Vinnie. Free speech is one of those inalienable rights that all people have - and that many governments especially in the Arab/Muslim world do not accept. Watching the free speech gains around the world being rolled back, even slightly is not a good sign at all. It needs to be stemmed sooner, rather than later.

UPDATE:
The embassy firebombings have resumed - and France was hit by Iranians in Tehran.

Iranian riot police stand guard as Iranian demonstrators throw molotov cocktails at the French embassy in Tehran, on February 10, 2006.

Forget about arresting or stopping the violence, they're just standing guard. Or silent assent. Just enough to claim that the mullahs are protecting the embassies as required under international law and custom, but not so much that they can't get their point across with violence.

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