Mohammed Cartoons Reprinted—In an Egyptian Newspaper.
Henry, a Stranger reader, just sent me this link. I’ve never heard of this blog before, and some folks will find it offensive (the author, apparently an Egyptian, calls himself “Sandmonkey”), but… uh… gee… it seems that an Egyptian newspaper reprinted the Danish cartoons in October of 2005.
Sandmonkey writes:
Guess we will have to Boycott Egypt now as well, huh?Now while the arab islamic population was going crazy over the outrage created by their government’s media over these cartoons, their governments was benifitting from its people’s distraction. The Saudi royal Family used it to distract its people from the outrage over the Hajj stampede. The Jordanian government used it to distract its people from their new minimum wage law demanded by their labor unions. The Syrian Government used it to create secterian division in Lebanon and change the focus on the Harriri murder. And, finally, the Egyptian government is using it to distract us while it passes through the new Judiciary reforms and Social Security Bill- which will cut over $300 million dollars in benefits to some of Egypt’s poorest families. But, see, the people were not paying attention, because they were too busy defending the prophet by sending out millions of e-mails and SMS-messages, boycotting cheese and Lego and burning Butter and the danish Flag. Let’s not even mention the idiots who went the usual route of “It’s a jewish conspiracy”, spouted the stupid argument about the Holocaust, or went on a diatribe with the old favorite “There is an organized campaign-headed by the west and the jews- to attack and discredit Islam, and we have to defend it”. They proved, once again, that the arab world is retarded and deserves no better than its leaders.
UPDATE: I just clicked into AndrewSullivan.com, and I see that he’s got the Egypt story up already. Sullivan links to another blog—FreedomForEgyptians.blogspot.com—with even more images from the Egyptian newspaper that published the cartoons.
Sullivan writes:
So we now discover that the hideously offensive and blasphemous cartoons—so blasphemous that CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, won’t publish them … were reprinted last October. In Egypt. On the front frigging page. No one rioted. No editor at Al Fager was threatened. So it’s official: the Egyptian state media is less deferential to Islamists than the New York Times. So where were the riots in Cairo? This whole affair is a contrived, manufactured attempt by extremist Muslims to move the goal-posts on Western freedom. They’re saying: we determine what you can and cannot print; and there’s a difference between what Muslims can print and what infidels can print. And, so far, much of the West has gone along. In this, well-meaning American editors have been played for fools and cowards.
UPDATE 2: In a story in today’s Seattle Times about The Stranger’s decision to republish four of the cartoons (we used them as illos for a piece Bruce Bawer wrote for The Stranger about the controversy), reporter Janet I. Tu quotes local Muslims who are upset about our decision to show the cartoons to our readers:
Jamal Rahman, a Muslim and minister with Interfaith Community Church in Ballard, said republishing the cartoons is an “unnecessary provocation.” …At the same time, many local Muslims said they find horrifying the violent demonstrations, in which seven people have died in the past two days. “If it’s the image of Islam they’re trying to protect, they’re doing exactly the opposite,” said Jeff Siddiqui… a real-estate agent. “Some morons in the Middle East decide they want to burn some buildings—talk about walking into the arms of the enemies.”Still, they found it dismaying that The Stranger would be publishing four of the cartoons in this week’s edition and on its Web site.
Janet I. Tu needs to call these folks back—both sound sensible and reasonable (the folks burning buildings are, as Siddiqui says, “morons”), and for the record they have every right to their opinions about what The Stranger decided to do—and ask them how they feel about the Egyptian paper that re-published the images long before The Stranger. Are they dismayed about the Egyptian paper too?
Ted Rall a political cartoonist and essayist has this article.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0208-20.htm