Riots, Free Speech, and Cartoons

The elusive moderate Muslim is speaking out in Denmark.

Dozens of Danish Muslims are joining the network of moderate Muslims, the Demokratiske Muslimer (Democratic Muslims). About 700 Muslims have already become DM members and 2,500 Danes have expressed their will to support the network. The initiative has caused anger among the Danish imams and their leader, Ahmad Abu Laban, who have referred to the moderates as “rats.” The imams feel that they are beginning to lose their control over part of the Muslim population.

Moderates such as Kamran Tahmasebi say they have had enough of fanatic Islamism and its intimidation of the Muslim immigrants in Denmark. “It is an irony that I am today living in a European democratic state and have to fight the same religious fanatics that I fled from in Iran many years ago,” Mr Tahmasebi says. He came to Denmark as a refugee in 1989. Today he works as a social consultant and is very grateful for the life Denmark has made it possible for him to have. He says he no longer wants to keep a low profile to avoid attracting the attention of the imams. The cartoon affair was an incentive for him to stand up and warn against the Islamist imams in Denmark, whom he says are damaging the integration process with their misleading criticism of Danish values and norms.

But is anyone within the militant Islamic community listening? There are two key audiences here - the moderate Muslims who need to know that they're going to have support against the extremists, and those in the West who think that this isn't a fundamental aspect of the global war on terror and the jihadist clash with Western thought.

The US media is listening to the militant Islamists, and have decided that cowardice is the better part of business sense and have tossed the concept of freedom of speech and freedom of expression into the wind. They're largely refusing to run the cartoons that have sparked worldwide rioting, even as they've run other images that could spark outrage. The difference is that the groups outraged over those other images aren't prone to torch buildings whereas the militant Islamists have already shown their propensity to torch stuff and cause mayhem.

These media outlets have folded in the face of an external threat. While many of these outlets routinely claim that the Administration is trying to clamp down on free speech and censoring what they're saying, these same outlets have gone ahead and censored themselves out of fear.

These media outlets do not want to upset their contacts within the Arab world, even though these same cartoons caused no massive outrage when first published last September. It took a concerted effort by Danish imams, in conjunction with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to spread the message - aided and abetted with bogus cartoons that were never even published in the Jutland Post.

Thankfully, some media outlets are publishing the cartoons, but they're the exception, not the rule. At a time when the media has no problem running Abu Ghraib photos ad nauseum for months on end, which can and did inflame the Islamists and the Arab World - not to mention most anyone who saw that the individuals involved in the brutality and abuse should be punished to the fullest extent, they're purposefully limiting the exposure of these cartoons.

Michelle Malkin posts some photos of Palestinian kids protesting in Hebron. While John at The Officer's Club wonders why these kids aren't in school, I'd argue that this is all part of the typical indoctrination at the Palestinian schools. This is what they're taught on a regular basis - nothing but hatred and intolerance. JunkYard Blog calls this Palestinian child abuse. I agree - after all, this is a 'scoiety' that for all intents and purposes sees its children as disposable weapons to be detonated at a time and place of their terrorist leaders' choosing.

Sisu has more thoughts. Canadian Muslim groups are pushing for hate crime charges against a Canadian publisher who published the cartoons. So much for free speech.

Meanwhile, will be see riots in America because yet another anti-America movie is opening, this time in Turkey? I don't think so. We simply value free speech and freedom of expression. Nope.

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