The insidious Zionist cartoon cartel

Take a few Danish cartoons. Simmer for five months.
Add generous heapings of Muslim paranoia, unconstrained Jew-hatred, and a smattering of European media trying to belatedly prove they have freedom of the press, and you get:

The Zionist conspiracy to insult Mohammed!

Damascus, (SANA) - Minister of Awqaf or religious Endowments urged the Danish government Thursday to deal with the issue of insulting Prophet Mohammed by Danish newspapers while the Danish ambassador called to open a new page via dialogue....“ This is to put an end to the Zionist lobby that damages ties among peoples … we note that Zionist hands that spread corruption among peoples and nations are behind such seditions,” the minister told the ambassador.

And...

TEHRAN, Feb. 3 (MNA) -- The insulting caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him and his household) published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, the Norwegian periodical Magazinet, and the German daily Die Welt have the potential to create a dangerous rift between Islam and the West.

Although the Western media have often insulted Islamic sanctities -- an obvious example is the book “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie – these publications’ recent insults of the prophet of Islam are a new development that had not occurred before.

The simultaneous measures definitely were not an accident. Rather, they are part of a comprehensive plan to confront Islam.

A careful analysis of similar events around the world over the past five years reveals that the U.S. neoconservatives and the Zionist lobby have formulated a plot to influence public opinion in the West so as to foster animosity between Islam and Christianity.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon...

Vice-President of the Higher Islamic Shiite Council Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan has demanded that the journalist responsible for publishing the 12 caricatures in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten be put on trial.

Qabalan was speaking on Friday following a meeting with Danish Ambassador to Syria and Jordan Ole Egberg Mikkelsen who conveyed to the Shiite cleric a letter from Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen that included an apology for the insult made to Prophet Mohammad and Islam.

Qabalan said: "I believe that the person responsible for the caricatures is a Jew or Zionist, because such an insult is the work of a Zionist."

Yup, as always, it is the Jews pulling the strings behind the worldwide conspiracy to insult Islam.

Many Muslims are calling for a boycott of Western goods altogether because of this kerfuffle.

Also interestingly is the reaction of so-called "moderate" Muslims. MSNBC notes:

Aside from the large demonstrations today, what sort of reaction did you hear from more moderate Palestinians?
Surprising anger. We spoke today to Dr. Asad Abu Sharak, a professor of linguistics at Al Azhar University in Gaza. He is considered to be a moderate and belongs to a group that sponsors an interfaith dialog with Christian and Jews, called Sabel.

Sharak said that he believes that this is part of a conspiracy against the Muslim community and “this is a premeditated campaign against the Muslims on the part of the West.”

He says that the publication of these cartoons is causing “a clash of civilizations that it will widen the gap of misunderstanding between the West and the East.”

He said he believed that this was an example of a double standard, that when someone denigrates the Holocaust they throw them in jail. But when someone denigrates the religious figure that Muslims hold most dear, they call it freedom of speech. He believes that the publication of the cartoons is actually a “premeditated crime” against Muslims and that “those people who published those cartoons should be brought to court.”

And this is coming from someone who is considered to be very moderate, but this was his attitude. Sharak lived in Ireland eight years and lived and taught at the University of Michigan for a year.

He doesn’t see this as an isolated incident, but rather as a campaign against Islam, and he was very vehement about that.

The only conclusion one can reach is that when "moderate" Muslims want dialogue with others, it is only to push their agenda, but not to listen to a word that the other side may have to say. For someone to live in the West for a decade and not understand the basics of freedom of speech means that he was not listening.

The hypocrisy is stunning. The freedoms that they are demanding only apply to them and not to any non-Muslim. The day that a Muslim stands up and says that Arab newspapers should not publish anti-semitic cartoons is the day that he has some legitimacy complaining about the (mostly innocuous) cartoons published in Denmark.