Because of the Mohammed cartoons, Muslims demonstrated at the Danish consulate in New York this weekend. One protester's sign included threats against four individuals who had "insulted" Islam, among them Ayaan Hirsi Ali. To see why she has earned "Allah's wrath" and our praise, read the articles below which I am reposting from last week. (Photo via Little Green Footballs)
From Reuters: Dutch MP says necessary to criticise Islam.
A Dutch politician and self-styled Muslim dissident urged Europeans to stand firm on Thursday in an international crisis over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, saying it was "necessary and urgent" to criticise Islam.Ayaan Hirsi Ali praised newspapers in many countries which have printed the cartoons, considered blasphemous by many Muslims, but said others had held back for fear of criticising what she called "intolerant aspects of Islam".
"Today I am here to defend the right to offend within the bounds of the law," she told a news conference organised by her publisher during a visit to Berlin.
"It's necessary and it's urgent to criticise Islam. It is urgent to criticise the teachings of Mohammad."
Hirsi Ali, who was born in Somalia and brought up as a Muslim, has received frequent death threats for her criticism of Islam, including in a controversial film called "Submission" for which she wrote the script.
Its director Theo van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death by a Dutch-born Islamist militant in 2004, and a note threatening Hirsi Ali was pinned to his chest with a knife.
"Many Muslims are peaceful people; not all are fanatics. As far as I am concerned they have every right to be faithful to their convictions. But within Islam exists a hard-line Islamist movement that rejects democratic freedoms and wants to destroy them," the Dutch liberal member of parliament said.
She heaped shame on editors and politicians who had argued it was insensitive or irresponsible to reproduce the Mohammad cartoons, including one showing him with a bomb in his turban.
From Speigel magazine: 'Everyone Is Afraid to Criticize Islam'.
SPIEGEL: But Muslims, like any religious community, should also be able to protect themselves against slander and insult.HIRSI ALI: That's exactly the reflex I was just talking about: offering the other cheek. Not a day passes, in Europe and elsewhere, when radical imams aren't preaching hatred in their mosques. They call Jews and Christians inferior, and we say they're just exercising their freedom of speech. When will the Europeans realize that the Islamists don't allow their critics the same right? After the West prostrates itself, they'll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.
To see more Newsmaker Caricatures by John Cox, click here.
Posted by Forkum at February 20, 2006 10:19 PM
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