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Denmark PM Furor over Cartoons a 'Global Crisis'

Muslim Outrage over Cartoons Continues

Muslim Cartoons Spark Increased Protests, Anger

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More Muslim Riots over Cartoons, Fatwa Issued for Cartoonist

By Dale Hurd
CBN News Sr. Reporter

CBN.com – LONDON, England - More Muslim riots are taking place over the cartoons depicting Muhammad.

Pakistani security forces arrested hundreds of Muslims Sunday, and used gunfire and tear gas to break up the crowd.

Pakistan banned the protests after riots killed five people in two cities last week. Meanwhile, demonstrators were unsuccessful in their attempt to storm the U.S. embassy in Indonesia.

In Nigeria, thousands of Muslims attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people.

And in London, 15 to 20,000 British Muslims gathered in Trafalgar Square Saturday to express their outrage over the cartoons.

It was supposed to be a peaceful gathering, but the anger was apparent.

The spokesman for the event, who is also a British lawyer, insists the cartoons of Mohammed should not be protected speech. He said, “My dear brothers and sisters, we will never accept for our messenger to be insulted and defamed…The correct understanding of Islam facilitates free speech in the maximum, to allow that progression to take place. But where free speech becomes irresponsible and comes within the realms of insult and injury and blasphemy, that's where we say that that is not free speech.”

A fatwa has also been issued, sanctioning the murder of the Danish cartoonist. And a Pakistani cleric has offered a $1 million reward to whoever kills the Danish cartoonist who drew the original cartoons.

The cartoonist is hiding, but he says he does not regret doing the cartoons.

A poll for Sunday's London Telegraph showed 40 percent of British Muslims now want those parts of Britain with high numbers of Muslims to have Islamic Sharia law. Sharia would impose stonings and amputations as punishment. And one in five said they felt some sympathy with the feelings or motives of the July 7 London suicide bombers.

Although British Muslims are less than five percent of the population here, they are arguably the most influential minority because they are feared. Earlier protests in London against the Mohammed cartoons called for beheadings.

But if there is one thing the British establishment fears more than Muslim violence, it is simply being labeled politically incorrect…an Islamophobe. Police have been slow or unwilling to crack down hard in Islamic radicals, and no mainstream British paper printed the cartoons.

Terrorism expert Simon Barrett advises members of Parliament on terrorism issues. Barrett said, “Having spoken to a number of journalists and asking them questions -- would your paper be prepared to publish these cartoons? The answer [they give] is no, because we fear that we would be targeted, we would firebombed and we would labeled as being anti-Islamic.”

Trevor Cavanaugh is the associate editor for Britain's largest newspaper, The Sun. “I thought all major newspapers in Britain and in Europe should have agreed to print the cartoons simply because, I think, satire, whether clever or not so clever, funny or not so funny, is so an important part, an important strand of democracy,” Cavanaugh said.

But that is a minority view. And this is a nation, like many in Europe that seems to still be in some denial over the threat from Islam, the threat to western democracy, and how to handle that threat.

There still seems to be an unwillingness to confront Muslim radicalism head-on in Britain, and that is why every terrorist expert we talked to said there will be another attack.

Patrick Mercer, the shadow minister for homeland security for the Conservative Party was asked whether he thought there would be another major attack.

Mercer said, “Yes. There have been three failed attacks - foiled attacks - since the 21st of July that we know about, that we have been told about. They're continuing to try… they continue to test us. They want to kill us.”

Moderate Muslim leaders continue to insist that they reject extremism and are helping authorities find the radicals.

But at least one speaker at Saturday's event said openly that the cartoons had, in fact, united Muslim moderates and radicals.

“We are being told that this is freedom, that this is the European way of life, to insult the prophets and the messengers. One thousand years ago no one dared harm a Muslim. You wanted us to keep remaining silent, but we will not remain silent when you insult the messenger of Allah,” he said.

Mercer says not enough Britons died in London's July 7 bombings to cause the government and the nation to realize the threat that it faces from Islamic fundamentalism.

“We are going to be attacked again, and will continue to be attacked,” Mercer said, “and only then will political correctness start to be rolled back.”

Saturday's London march was intended to be peaceful, but analysts fear that the tremendous anger on display will eventually lead to violence.

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