Murder attempt against Danish Cartoonist

Danish police have shot and wounded an axe-wielding Somali man who tried to break into the home of a cartoonist whose 2005 drawings of Prophet Muhammad outraged Muslims around the world.

Intelligence authorities said the 28-year-old suspect, armed with an axe and knife, had attempted to enter the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in the eastern city of Aarhus late on Friday.

Westergaard, whose 5-year-old granddaughter was in the home on a sleepover, sought shelter in a specially made safe room when the suspect broke a window of the home, Preben Nielsen of the Aarhus police said.

Michael Larsen, a police spokesman, said that authorities arrived at the house minutes after receiving an alarm alerting them to the intruder.

"[The authorities] found a person and he attacked the police with an axe and a knife. He was shot in the leg and the hand and he is in hospital [now]," he told Al Jazeera .

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/01/20101215126128539.html

So the Fatwa is still on! I find it unbelievable that this man's five year old grand-daugher has to sleep in a special 'safe room'.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

I would have thought his home address would be a 'secret'. I wonder how they were able to track him to his home. Its an attack on art and free speech.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I think its a shame that people have to live in fear for being critical of Islam. I am not sure what it says about Islam, but it is not good.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I agree with you. The problem is that now writers and artists have to think twice and thrice if they want to write or depict anything about the faith. It means the fanatics have done a good job of censoring those in the West a la Salman Rushdie

The most innocent remark is considered blasphemy. Why are the moderates not speaking out about this kind of thing? Why not try and stop or address the extremism that is being expressed willy nilly from THEIR quarters?

 

Well it seems Islam has more than its fair share of fanatics. When was the last time a Christian, Hindi, Buddist attacked someone who was critical of their religion or one of their religious figures? Artists, journalists, have been critical and poking fun at Christ for a long time and no one is threatening the authors.

 

agreed bells, including those who are fanatical about "fredom of speach". Both the guy and the newspaper need to take a good hard look at themselves and ask themselves "Was it really worth it, was it really that important". Its time people actually took some responcability with there "freedoms".

For instance there was some questions posed by an experimental philosipher on ABC National the other day.

Now the question was "did the chairman delibratly wreck the enviroment?" to which the majority said "yes, he delibratly made that choice to wreck the enviroment". This situation is no different. Yes they COULD do it but SHOULD they have done it? No i dont belive they should. Concidering the world climate and the atacks against Islam, the racist attituded ect they should have found another way to show there "freedom of speach" rather than being so blatantly offensive.

 

Are suggesting that people who live in their own country and work for their own newsrags, writing in their own language should censor themselves for people living in other countries?

Are you suggesting that we should censor ourselves by force of threat? We should censor ourselves out of fear of extremists?

They didn't attack islam and I personally as well as many others didn't find anything 'offensive' nor was it racist about the cartoons which is why the French decided to publish them in support as well as other nations. Are you saying our policy at home should change to appease those who live in a different society? As joe has said jesus is depicted in strange ways all the time and no christian seems to want to kill them for it perhaps its because they come from a society where they value the freedom of expression.

 

I think your being nieve to think that muslims widely wernt offended. Just because someone wont kill for something doesnt mean they didnt find it offensive and i belive that ANY pitures of the profit mohumad are concidered offensive to muslims.

A side issue, aborigionals find it highly offensive to display pitiures of there dead, there for the media and aborigional groups have worked out together that a "warning lable" should be put on all TV stories which will feature images of dead aborigionals before they died. This is because the media felt that it was vital to other audiances that they still be able to show these people and therefore they worked out a compromise.

Did the cartonist or the paper try to work out a compromise? did they ask muslim leaders in there OWN country "hey if we publish this are you going to find it offensive?"

No they did it to get EXACTLY the reaction that they got. I might point out that even in countries which DO have free speach there are also laws forbiding the delibrate incitment of violence and that goes just as much for the paper as it does for the terriousts

 

My house, my rules. If you don't like it, fuck off back to Somalia.

 

I never said they were or were not offended. I am asking why a Danish cartoonist who writes for a Danish newspaper in his own country should be censored by some mob living elsewhere? The cartoons didn't incite violence in denmark. The cartoons didn't promote violence. I'm not offended by mullahs who talk rubbish about the west especially when it comes out of Saudi Arabia or wherever. Are you suggesting that we change the way we operate in the West to appease muslims?

Are you suggesting that Danes don't display nuddies of the dead because aboriginals might be offended? :bugeye: Maybe the Cambodians should hear about this as they always display the dead in their newspapers. Should I inform them that its an insult to aboriginals?

What else? Should we stop serving pork and alcohol too in Western restaurants because it may offend a muslim who enters? Or worse yet because it may offend muslims in the middle-east? Is this what you mean?

 

If he wasn't suggesting, it doesn't matter. I think it's become a fact whether we like it or not. And with this new attack, my best guess is that any writers and news people will think twice about what they say or draw or publish. You and I might not like it, but the Muslim fanatics have probably caused a lot of self-censor in the western world. And that's what they want, isn't it? Have they won already? No, they want more.

Lucy, there just aren't many westerners in today's world that are willing to stand up and yell "Give me the right to riducule Islam or give me death!" They don't yell that because they know that someone just might "give them that death!"

Whether you like it or not, those attacks, as well as the "normal" terrorist attacks around the world, are simply proof to the news people (as well as others) that they aren't safe from attack. Writing ridicule of Islam or even of a few Muslims is not in their best interest ...or in the interest of their own safety.

The more the fundamentalist Muslims pull of terrorist attacks, the more they're "winning" this long, drawn-out war against the west. Westerners don't like to fight in the deep, dark shadows ...we like to put on the gloves and face our enemy in the arena. "Backstabbing" and "Hitting from behind" have become the same as "that's a nasty thing to do!" But to the terrorists, that's what they like to do. And that's why we're scared of them ....and rightly so. There's a Muslim right behind you right now ....is he going to be the one to go off the deep end and attack you? How do you know?

Baron Max

 

i was surpised at first that people still care about that.

this is my safe room:

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Yeah, I wonder why...

 

Baron where in the cartoons did you find ridicule? Also you are wrong. They have repeatedly reproduced the cartoons throughout Europe out of solidarity. Its not their society I am worried about its what will become of ours if we are to be intellectually hijacked. All you are doing is buying into the idea that we have to fear Islam and muslims because the truth is we don't know what offends them and what doesn't offend.

 

I'm quoting myself because this post is going on from that thought.

Why on Earth should any of us feel any obligation whatsoever to alter our own demographics, culture, laws, or anything else about our society to please visitors, invaders, immigrants, or random fucking preachers from a foreign religion from the other side of the planet? For any of us in our own homes, our own nations, why should we not value our own people and our own ways above those others? Why should we not defend what we prefer against that which is clearly abhorrent to our way of life?

What is enlightened or superior about bending over and simply saying "Yes, Mister New Arrival, we will live as you want us to! Shit, we even have Sharia courts in London now, and I hope that's sufficient arse-kissing for you so you won't bitch about unfair discrimination!"?

Was it enlightened and superior for the American Indians to bend over and get corn-holed by white immigrants? Was it advanced of them to have their cultures, their tribes almost wiped out? Hell no. They had every right to fight back, to try preserving what was theirs. They lost. Look at them now. And the vast majority of that loss was due to simple immigration, not massacres.

Should the Jews, during WW2, have simply bent over and said "Yep, force your strange ways on us, we don't mind, we'll go with whatever you decide"? No. They should have fought to keep their people, their tribe, and their culture alive. And they did fight. It was right to do so.

Whether a migrating population is war-like or peaceful doesn't matter (although in this case it provides good arguments). What matters is that any group has the right to survive as it wishes, to maintain its demographics and cultural makeup as it likes them to be.

 

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. The fact of the matter is that the average Westerner is a coward. They are used to living in relative comfort and safety, and the thought of a fine (or God forbid, a few months of jail time!) is enough to have them shitting themselves at the thought of challenging authority, let alone criticising a bunch of people who will likely chop their head off.

Just look at the state of the U.K. Recently a veteran was sent to jail simply for finding a gun in his backyard and taking it to the police station like a good citizen. For this he was charged with possession of a firearm (note: the citizens of the United Kingdom willingly surrendered their gun rights with a whimper.) Furthermore, the veteran was convicted by a jury of 12, who was unaware of their right to nullify (ie. return a not guilty verdict out of protest).

Consider that centuries ago, their ancestors likely bore arms to overthrow tyranny (King Charles I) and exercised their right to nullify when bureaucrats were sending people to Australia for stealing bread to feed their starving children.

This is why Muslims will eventually Islamify the West. They have balls, Westerners generally do not.

 

has little or nothing to do with what we should fear lucy. Why dont you go out and call someone a peadophile when you know they arnt? fear of the law (defimation) or because its the wrong thing to do? Why dont you yell fire in a crowded theater? fear of the laws against it or because its morally wrong? Why did all the museams in england give back the remains of aborigionals (for the most part), fear Australia would invade or because it was causing aborigionals offense and it was wrong to do so?

As i said, just because you CAN doesnt mean you SHOULD and its time people stated taking some responcability for there actions rather than just jumping up and down like teenages yelling "my right".

Oh and on your restraunt senario, of course not, but a meal in a restraunt is not publically ridiculing someone (or a group of someones) for the sake of it. To take your senario it would be closer to serving ONLY pork at a banquet put on for muslims

 

What are you going on about? Have you even seen the cartoons? They didn't call mohammed a pedophile! They were images DESIGNED FOR THEIR READERS IN THEIR SOCIETY!!!!! Again where did you find ridicule? And even if they were that is still not a reason to give into mob sensationalism coming out of a different country and society.

The cartoons addressed concerns in Danish society. They in no way interfered with speech laws in their own society. So no Asguard I don't quite get where you are coming from on this.

 

What you think his moral obligations were is irrelevant. Indeed, one person dictating another person's moral obligations has always been the way freedom of speech has been curtailed. His freedom to say what he wants in his own freakin home is more important than your ideas about what he should believe.