The map includes murder of innocents, riots, torching embassies, and general mayhem, in addition to peaceful demonstrations. How much of this is due to new areas being exposed to the cartoons and how much is due to Islamists spreading their hateful messages and using the cartoons as pretext for violence.
As we're seeing today in Nigeria, where the urge for violence has been present for quite some time, all it took was a little nudge to get the violence going. At least 15 people have been killed and churches have been torched in just the past day. This is in addition to the numerous attacks by the Nigerian Muslim population against the Nigerian Christians over the past several years.
Meanwhile, there are some people around the world who are defending the freedoms we hold dear - starting with the freedom of expression and free speech. Agora translated the following Jyllands-Posten editorial by Per Nyholm
I know, Mr. President that neither can you nor will you do this and that is the problem. A problem you share with other rulers from the Phillipines across Central Asia to the Middle East and Africa. The problem - except from a few lying Imams - is not in Denmark, but in the Moslem world where religion isn’t a private matter - where Mullahs are allowed to pester the believers in their homes, in their workplaces and in government. Only this all-encompassing religiousity can explain how 12 rather innocous cartoons can lead us to the present, a place where several have died on account of them.
You complain, Mr. President - with no small justification - about the Islamophobia of The West. In connection with that, some have complained of a drawing of Muhammed with a bomblike turban as being the most offensive. Very well, what do you think hurts Islam the most? The cartoon or this: that millions of viewers watch crazed and savage madmen decapitate their victims with knives or slaughter thousands of innocents, Moslems included, from New York to Iraq and Bali?
Respectfully, Mr. President, these killings and threats are of little use. If you say we can’t show the likeness, or alleged likeness, of Muhammed in Denmark, I say: our rights are not up for discussion. Moslem repressions will not be accepted as the basis for diminishing the foundations of Western Democracy - a system, I might add, which also many Moslems strive for and which you - as far as I know - in no small degree try to uphold.
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