Danish drawings

Hi all,  this will be by hardest post ever since I have to cover so much and am very worried I fail to make myself clear.

Let me first cover the burning of our embassies. Acts of violence makes not hear the message or protest contents. But our embassies are not holy enough to spill blood. Its better that no police or demonstrators are hurt or killed. Let them burn our embassies. By international conventions it is up to local authorities to defend any embassies. If police pulls back when they have no other option its ok.

If you have not followed my posts from the start the rest will be hard to understand.

When I joined this forum a couple of days ago. My real question was, is the Islam world now about to enforce Muslim rules on Danes.

Reasoning was Muslim people don't draw pictures of living beings and then Muslims don't want non Muslims to draw the prophet.

That was the extent of my understanding of the conflict. Few words to summarize this: Bottomless ignorance.

Quickly, by posts of contributors here the understanding was moved. Now it is obvious that this is an insult so grave, Muslim people finds they cannot accept.  I can understand this so I go and seek solutions. Within freedom of press there limitations already. Adding another to honor Muslim requests should not be a problem.

Today while Danish embassies were burning there was a peace demonstration in Copenhagen. Danes and Muslims demonstrating together.

There have been no reports of any incidents between Muslims and Danes throughout these unfortunate days. We live side by side, just as before.

This evening there was a debate on Danish television. The first and major TV channel. It is non-commercial, meaning no ads, but independent, governed by Danish law.

Participation was a representative of the paper, representative of the government party (spokesman on foreign affairs), Danish people's party leader, parliment member from radical (party I mentioned above, a highly respected moderate Muslim), a Muslim lady (sorry I never was able to write down her name or organization), a Danish expert on Muslim world and finally the head of Muslim umbrella organization in Denmark, Ahmed Akkari.

I don't think I got Ahmed Akkari's names correctly spelled, No disrespect intended. Ahmed Akkari is closely related to the imam Ahmad Abu Laban, who Danish media (and myself) accused saying everything is fine to Danish media, and then saying continue boycott to middle east media. Danish media and I need to correct our statements on Ahmad Abu Laban. Ahmed Akkari has also been making a tour in the Middle East presenting the drawings, raising anger. By showing spreading the pictures, and also additional pictures not published. The addional pictures was the issue here. It is viewed in Denmark (and by me) as an attempt to spread additional problems. I am now convinced that this was not the case. The words of imam Ahmad Abu Laban also comes in a different light. If he tells the Danish media that he will smooth things over, and at the same time says to Middle East media that he is happy that Muslim people boycott Denmark, to defend the prophet. For me it's easy to see these statements as two messages can be viewed as two different messages. But with my current knowledge I can easily see that they are not.

Back to the debate on Danish television. For me it was a rather painful experience. Danish society (this includes me) is a secular society. The experiences to have a society based on religious believe has been so bad, that we finally, generations ago have been able to cast off this burden. The direct result of this is that we view the world in political terms. Not religious terms. We can perfectly well understand a discussion based on political terms. But when it comes to religious terms we are clueless.

For us to understand you are discussing based on religious terms, is a basic as for you to understand we are discussing in political terms. I am not saying one is better. But as we discuss on political terms and you on religious terms, we can spend eons talking past each other and never ever meet

This is what happened during the debate. The Danes are at my very first level when I came here. Is Islam trying to enforce rules on me?

Sad case, but they have felt hostility. I was curious enough to find out if my assumptions where true or not. Being here has speeded up my understanding. Before the debate viewers where encouraged to post questions for the debates. One was raised very early in the debate. It came from me. Yes, you heard right. Never heard me name read on Danish TV before. Same message as posted to Danish political parties. Unfortunately it was presented in the middle of a rather heated argument so it was quickly dismissed. But the debate leader at least thought it was interesting enough to be raised. It was about changing Danish legislation.

A second viewer question was raised 30 minutes into the debate. It was if Islam wanted to enforce Islam rules on Denmark or not. Sigh and double sigh.

I came to this board hoping I would learn and be able to tell people the boycott is unjust. Now I don't know. The Danes are not evil, Danes do not hurt people on purpose, but still they (we) do what seems right to them (us). Given time they (we) will learn.

Events are making it very hard to learn for them. Any act of violence completely blocks reasoning. So whatever any violent, hooligan does only makes matters worse. Previously gained understanding just flies away and is gone forever. Violent psychopaths we have, lock them up and charge to the full extent of the law.

Having said this I give you the small story about the Swedish flag. It's a story about a people loosing its symbol and gaining it back.

Not long ago, we are talking the 1980's. Swedish people stopped using the Swedish flag. You could only see it once in a while waving from some highly official event. Rarely else.

Neo-Nazi groups in Sweden noticed this; they started using the Swedish flag on all their events. Soon you could not show a Swedish flag without being regarded as a Nazi. After a long while the Swedish people realized this. Started using the flag and gradually won it back. Since last year Sweden has a national day. This is the eventual result of before having lost the flag.

In Denmark the story is different. The liberation of the Danish people came later. Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany. The Danish flag is commonly used. For instance, when somebody have a birthday. The Danish flag is the main decoration.

I you like to go on with the boycott then am my guest. It's unfair but the (we) Danes are wrong here. We could do more to address the problem the Muslim world have every right to rise.

The Muslim world has to grab your religion out of the hands of violate people doing criminal acts. Burning embassies, flags, threatening lives of Scandinavian people so they have to leave countries, acts, As long as this happens most Danes will think they need to distance, and defend themselves from Islam. We will not learn anything by intimidation.

Nobody here has said anything about it being wrong to burn down a Danish embassy. I don't know if this goes without saying, or if people here just think: the Danes got what they deserved. They had this coming. But on the other hand, I am not here to defend every nutcase, we might have that wants to go out and commit criminal acts.

Its about time you start condeming criminal acts. If you don't then I can only assume you approve of them. Or dare not by being worried the feeling threatend not to do so. Otherwise there is no reason for me to post here.   

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I have edited this post several times. Some of it is still in small font. That is not intentional. Everything should be same size. I don't understand why. I hope I have fixed most of the spelling. When it comes to evil only computers are really evil..

It seems to me like some right wing fascist group put out those cartoons to deliberately start a conflict. That's how fascists get in power; they create hatred. And the Muslims are falling right into the trap.

The Danes are cool. They stood up against Hitler; they wouldn't turn over their Jews and never collaborated with the Nazis. To blame the Danes because they have a small group of hate mongers (like every country does) is stupid.

I think they should have let the whole thing slide and it would have been forgotten.

I think the people that put out the cartoon in the first place are getting a good laugh over all the destruction and hatred they created.

Bismillah,

Wrangle, the question you ask right here seems to be directed to the wrong audience.  Don't you need to ask the Muslims in Denmark what they would like because these laws effect them, not us?

There are a lot of detailed points that I don't have the time to go in to.  Sorry.

I read an article about this and the fact that the Danish government says that they cannot apologize for the Danish press.  They should strongly suggest that the Danish press apologize.    They should talk to the Muslims in Denmark as ask what they can do, short of taking responsibilty for someone else's actions, to rectify the situation politically. 

However, to be very clear, there are no Muslims who want to see or approve of this depiction of our Holy Prophet Muhammad, pbuh.  Now, take Osama Bin Laden's figure and draw him and we won't care.  Okay, someone we like:  Hmm, I like Hannan  Ashrawi, sp.  Draw a caricature of HER.  But NEVER our prophets, any of them, by the way! 

The leadership in all of the countries where these were published need to take a stand against it publically, AS IF IT MATTERED TO THEM!

Wrangl, It is a credit to you that you are engaging and intervening in events.

The point I was making is this. No amount of 'diplomatic' talk between diplomats, or the 'legal' reform of the laws of Denmark is going to resolve the economic, religious and cultural oppression that "the west" has been practicing in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine for generations. THE 'CARTOON' WAS DESIGNED TO PROVOKE TROUBLE FOR ANYONE WHO OPPOSES THIS OPPRESSION, ESPECIALLY MUSLIMS.

If you do not understand this please get back to me and tell me why you don't understand this.

Best wishes