More on Danish Cartoons

The confrontation continues, and Islam comes out of this looking very bad indeed.

• Protesters outside the Danish embassy in London include a guy who was apparently dressed as a suicide bomber. Some time after this soft-spoken guy gives an apology for the damage he's done to Islam by his portrayal, he is found to be a drug dealer, out of prison on license after serving part of his sentence. It seems he's now been returned to gaol. (But I want to register my defence of his right to dress as a suicide bomber if he so wishes. He was making a point, and raising a debate. Of course when he said in his apology that he was behaving just as badly, and possibly worse, than the cartoonists, he testified to the self-defeating nature of the point he was making.)
• It seems the Danish cartoons weren't sufficient by themselves to raise anger in Islamic states. The Danish imams who went to publicise the cartoons fabricatd three further cartoons (1, 2, 3) portraying Mohammed as a paedophile, a pig and engaged in bestiality. If that's the case, we know that they were inciting hatred, stirring up unrest, and that they don't care about misrepresentation of Mohammed at all. For more alleged lies and misrepresentations, see here.
• It appears that the cartoons which caused the viloent protests when reprinted in Denmark were also reprinted last October by Al Fagyr, one of Egypts largest newspapers.

Other points of record:

• On Monday 6th February, police have promised a swift investigation into Muslim protestors calling for enemies of Islam to be killed. Here's a mediocre BBC anlaysis of the possible offences.
• According to the BBC, a Swedish Internet Service Provider, in correspondence with has shut down a political party's web site after discussions with the government and security police. The reason, it seems, was that the web site was calling for readers to send in their own Mohammed cartoons. It's difficult: should a government allow free speech when it's likely to end up with some of their citizens being killed and others suffering economic effects? I believe it must inevitably be so, because the alternative is ultimately that Islamic views are allowed to override principles of free countries to the point where free countries become Islamic countries.
• Here's a Cartoon Conflict time-line from the BBC