Cart00ns

Soon, in Muslim lands, you will not be allowed to whisper the word "cartoon" because the very word will whip up he listener into a murderous frenzy.

Don't believe me? Then listen to the saga of the New Straits Times, a Malaysian newspaper.

Malaysia is about 60% Muslim, and the NST is quite on board with the whole "blame the West for insulting the Prophet" nonsense.

The newspaper also publishes Non-Sequitur, a comic strip by Wiley Miller that is syndicated worldwide.

Here was the Non-Sequitur comic strip from Monday, and the New Straits Times agreed to run it:



No caricatures of Mohammed, nothing remotely making fun of Mohammed.

Of course, the Islamists went crazy.

After the cartoon was published in the New Strait Times, police received complaints from Malaysia's Islamic opposition party (Parti Islam SeMalaysia) and three nongovernmental organizations. The Times got a show-cause letter from the Internal Security Ministry and was given three days to explain in writing why action shouldn't be taken against it for running the cartoon, which the ministry said breached the conditions of the newspaper's publishing permit.

"Once again, it seems the ironically challenged have just validated
the point of the satire," said Miller, when reached today by E&P.

The New Straits Times' defense is hardly a stirring call for freedom of speech:

If this cartoon were to mock Islam and the Prophet, then, certainly, the newspaper that publishes it, in this case the New Straits Times, its executives responsible should be held accountable. Just as the editors and publishers of the Sarawak Tribune and Guang Ming were held accountable.

The reference here is to two other Malaysan newspapers - one published the cartoons but blurred them out, and the other published a photo of someone reading a newspaper with the cartoons.

And both newspapers got shut down.

Now the NST is fighting for its own rights, such as they are in the backwards nation of Malaysia.