Agenda September 10, 2005	Holy Shit, Newsweek! May 16, 2005
Jewdicial Activism May 8, 2005	Dry as a Bone April 22, 2005
Viva La Devolution April 19, 2005	Don't Feed Me, I'm Fat! March 23, 2005
The Eternal Challenge March 17, 2005	Haul Ass John February 27, 2005
Better Be The Last June 24, 2004	Behooded! May 26, 2004
Person of the Year May 11, 2004	Bloody Mary Janaury 29, 2004
Mazel's Muzzle January 20, 2004	They Build Walls, Don't They? Janaury 1, 2004
Killa Queen September 24, 2003	Phoenix Rising September 11, 2003
Don't Cry For Me Nigeria July 10, 2003	Slinking Towards Sodom June 25, 2003
Amina Lawal November 26, 2002	End Game October 10, 2002
New World Attention Deficit Disorder September 30, 200	Unbearable Likeness September 23, 2002
Things Go Better September 11, 2002	Chosen August 14, 2002
The Psalm of Adolf July 29, 2002	Immaculate Erection April 22, 2002
Faith Based March 14, 2002	Qibla Quibblers January 30, 2002
Burn Your Burkas! December 14, 2001	Statue of Osama November 1, 2001
Mickey Mouse 2001	John Paul II 2001

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THE BLOGS SPEW FORTH... Mohammed "desecrated" by cartoons; Arab Muslim extremists offended, angry, and verging on the edge of insanity (NOTE: point of view clarified) The Gun Toting Liberal Apologies: Islam and the free press The Next Frontier Muslim Reaction to the Cartoons Orwell's Grave

The global furor over the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad as violent seems as inappropriate as the tepid condemnation over Pat Robertson’s call to assassinate Hugo Chavéz.

Calling for the beheading of an artist for creating a caricature depicting a religion as violent is hypocritical. About as hypocritical as assaulting or killing a woman for appearing in a degrading beauty contest. Or like amputating Ann Coulter’s legs for her immodest vagina flashing on Fox News. Or castrating and sodomizing men who rape.

As fanatical, intolerant Muslim clerics continue to incite violence over the depictions of violence, and as Israeli Jews deliberately incite riots by building unauthorized new structures in settlements, America’s religious righteous -- armed with justifications from their churches, mosques and synagogues -- are mincing into gay bars with machetes and guns and opening fire. Others are frantically preparing to picket Coretta Scott King’s funeral because she supported gay rights. The Pope, lost in the haze of his Nazi Youth is too busy purging the symptoms of his dysfunctional, homocentric Church -- in between satin dress fittings and Prada shopping sprees -- blissfully oblivious to the blatantly obvious causes. The one certain thing all of these Torah-touting, Koran-clutching, Bible-thumping, Scripture-screeching religious zealots seem to share, is an unbridled lust for violence.

While all the world’s major religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, and Hinduism – shoulder responsibility for fueling extremist factions spewing hatred, violence and intolerance, Muslims do need to drop the victimization act and realize that just as they condemn and judge others with impunity, so too must they learn to cope with being subject to criticism.

Until people stop, in Allah's name, stoning woman to death, killing homosexuals, cutting the hands off children stealing food to survive, flying passenger planes into skyscrapers, car-bombing innocent people, forcing their religious convictions onto others, and other such atrocities, and until Muslims loudly and clearly reject and condemn the violence perpetrated by those who have hijacked and perverted their religion, the likelihood of cartoonists depicting Muhammad as a gentle, olive-branch carrying dove is not particularly high.

Clinton Fein, Sticks and Stones Can Break Your Bones, But Cartoon Flaps Can Kill You, February 4, 2006

The Muslim world erupted in anger on Friday over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in Europe while the Bush administration offered the protesters support, saying of the cartoons, "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive."

Streets in the Palestinian regions and in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia were filled with demonstrators calling for boycotts of European goods and burning the flag of Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared.

While a huge rally in the Gaza Strip was peaceful — and many leaders warned against violence — some of the oratory was not.

"We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," one preacher at Al Omari mosque in Gaza told worshipers during Friday Prayer, according to Reuters. Other demonstrators called for amputating the hands of the cartoonists who drew the pictures.

Joel Brinkly and Ian Fisher, U.S. Says It Also Finds Cartoons of Muhammad Offensive, The New York Times, February 4, 2006

Hundreds of Muslims have staged angry protests in London following the publication of cartoons satirising the prophet Mohammed.

Scores waved placards bearing angry messages, one declaring: "Behead the one who insults the prophet".

Others said: "Free speech go to hell" and "Europe: Your 9/11 will come".

The protesters met after Friday prayers outside Regent's Park mosque in central London and marched through the streets towards the Danish embassy on Sloane Street.

They chanted religious slogans in Arabic, paying homage to Allah and the Prophet.

Muslims March On Embassy, Sky News, February 3, 2006

The decision by some New Zealand media to show cartoons which have triggered armed protests in Islamic countries has raised concerns among local exporters over possible boycotts of NZ products in those markets.

The cartoons, first printed by a Danish newspaper in September, caricature the Prophet Mohammad - and were reprinted earlier this month in a Christian magazine in Norway.

Some of the cartoons were featured on TV One's Close Up current affairs show yesterday, and some Fairfax newspapers, including The Dominion Post, in Wellington are to publish at least one of the cartoons today.

The New Zealand exposure has raised concerns among exporters to the Middle East that New Zealand meat and milk products in Islamic markets might now be targeted by boycotts spread by consumers over text and e-mail networks.

Danish cartoons in NZ media raise concerns over trade risk, Manawatu Standard, New Zealand, February 4, 2006

The UN's Kofi Annan urged Muslims to accept the apology from the newspaper where the cartoons first appeared.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw praised UK media for its "responsibility and sensitivity" in not publishing them.

Mr Straw said the decision by some European newspapers to print the cartoons was "disrespectful" and he added that freedom of speech did not mean an "open season" on religious taboos.

More protests due in cartoon row, BBC, February 4, 2006

The controversy over the 12 caricatures of Muhammad published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has exploded into a global scandal, complete with angry demonstrations, defiant republications of the cartoons in newspapers across Europe, diplomatic démarches and withdrawn Arab envoys, a boycott of Danish goods in the Middle East, gunmen at the European Union's office in Gaza, and calls for calm amid fears of more tumult to come. (You can see the cartoons here.)

News agencies settled on "Muslim outrage" as a shorthand to describe the uproar over the cartoons. This is accurate but tells only part of the story. In the Arab world, press reactions revealed additional nuances in what is the biggest international wrangle over freedom of expression and respect for Islam since Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

Daniel Kimmage, Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark, Slate, February 3, 2006

So, what could and should the civilized world do to fight this disease? When Jews suffered because of hate speech, we invented the anti-Semitism law to protect them. I propose widening this umbrella to include the rest of us. The UN and other concerned international organizations, governmental and nongovernmental, must start collaboration to come up with such rules.

Otherwise, the current clash of civilizations will continue at a larger and more dangerous level and rate.

Humiliated people of a certain religion, race or culture may take it only for a while. The world’s most devastating war, World War II, was a direct result of humiliation the German race suffered at the hands of victorious World War 1 powers. Humiliating over a billion Muslims can’t go on for long without a hit back. Extremists, terrorist organizations and hate preachers are already working on it. Can we afford to wait until the damage is irreversible? We waited too long before and did too little. We should wake up earlier and do better ... this time.

Dr. Khaled Batarfi, Hate Speech in the Guise of Freedom of Expression, Arab News, February 5, 2006

Sunday newspapers will not be allowed to publish a controversial cartoon of the prophet Muhammad after a Muslim pressure group was granted a court interdict.

The South African National Editors Forum said on Saturday several South African media houses were gagged from publishing the cartoon on Friday night.

The Jamiat-ul Ulama of Transvaal, which sought an interdict against Johncom Media and Independent Newspapers among others, said the cartoon was "deeply offensive".

The organisation was granted the interdict around 10.30pm on Friday.

The Sunday Times, one of the Johncom newspapers that received a letter from the group asking if it would publish the cartoon, said at the time it had not decided on its action.

The paper's editor, Mondli Makhanya, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Saturday that it was a "huge blow for the media".

Cartoon row: Sunday Times gagged, Mail & Guardian, South Africa, February 4, 2006

Before I launch into this report, I want to underline that few places in the Muslim world have seen violence over the caricatures, so far mainly Damascus and Beirut (which are unexpected in this regard.) Protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and elsewhere have been nonviolent. This is not to play down the seriousness of what happened in Damascus and Beirut over the weekend--acts which can only inspire horror and condemnation--only to set it in context. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. A lot of Muslim countries saw no protests at all. In some places, as in Pakistan, they were anemic. The caricature protests are resonating with local politics and anti-imperialism in ways distinctive to each Muslim country. The protests therefore are probably not mostly purely about religion.

Juan Cole, Caricatures Roil Muslim World, Informed Consent, February 6, 2006

What Muslims are saying is that depicting Muhammad with a bomb in his turban is insupportable. It is often assumed that in the West we believe in free speech, so there is nothing that is insupportable.

But that simply is not true. Muslims mind caricatures of Muhammad because they view him as the exemplar of all that is good in human beings. Most Western taboos are instead negative ones, not disallowal of attacks on symbols of goodness but the questioning of symbols of evil.

Thus, it is insupportable to say that the Nazi ideology was right and to praise Hitler. In Germany if one took that sort of thing too far one would be breaking the law. Even in France, Bernard Lewis was fined for playing down the Armenian holocaust. It is insupportable to say that slavery was right, and if you proclaimed that in the wrong urban neighborhoods, you could count on a violent response.

So once you admit that there are things that can be said that are insupportable, then the Muslim feelings about the caricatures become one reaction in an entire set of such reactions.

Juan Cole, Muslim Protests Against Anti-Muhammad Caricatures, Informed Consent, February 5, 2006

Doug Clifton, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, told Editor & Publisher that he did not “see a need to insert ourselves in that fight." But Clifton said his paper will likely place a link to the images from another site when it runs an editorial on the issue over the weekend. "They will have the option to see it if they choose," he said.

That is unquestionably the most cowardly and pathetic response I have seen to date. It’s one thing to state, albeit disingenuously, that publication of the images is not germane to the telling of the story, but its quite another to claim that as an excuse to mask a fear of reprisals or to capitulate to pressure.

Since Clifton believes that the story doesn’t warrant running the images, is unwilling to take a stand, and genuinely believes the story doesn’t warrant it, how about demonstrating how good he is at articulating the story without them? The “choice” he’s offering is not in his editorial control.

What Doug Clifton is doing is riding on the backs of others who are taking significant risks in standing up for their principles and having the courage of their convictions.

Clifton’s yellow approach is the moral journalistic equivalent of jacking off during a gang rape.

Clinton Fein, Black and White and Yellow All Over Annoy.com, February 8, 2006

Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad I decided to publish in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.

I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.

But the cartoon story is different. [...]

[...] We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims. [...]

[...] Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

Flemming Rose, Culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, Why I Published Those Cartoons, The Washington Post, February 19, 2006