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crisis: A recipe for disaster Those in the Middle East and other Muslim countries are also angry with their own rulers who struck under-the-table deals with the West, turning a blind eye to the US-led Western nations in their designs to control Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine where killing Muslims has become a daily occurrence, though the Western media virtually ignored the plight of the people in these countries. The atmosphere has been so tense all over the world during the past few years that all what was needed was a spark to inflame the situation further dividing the Muslims and Christians who have lived in peace and harmony for centuries. The spark ignited on Sept. 30, 2005, when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a cartoon insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The Islamic Organization in Denmark peacefully asked the newspaper to stop publishing such cartoons. Dismissing these appeals, the daily continued to publish, one after the other, twelve such cartoons, knowing very well that it would antagonize and enrage 1.4 billions Muslims all over the world. The Islamic Organization took up the matter with the Danish government which simply ignored them and supported the daily. But the reprinting of these provocative cartoons in Norway last month, followed by dailies in France, Germany, Italy and Spain this month, led to waves of protests and a boycott of Danish goods which later spread like wildfire all over the Muslim world burning Danish, Norwegian and Swedish embassies. Some Muslim nations even recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. The
EU response was to blackmail the Muslim countries with stern reminders
that they are under treaty obligations to protect foreign embassies.
European Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said, "Calls
for boycotts or for restraints on the freedom of the press are completely
unacceptable." In other words what Frattini meant was that
"Muslims should choose capitalism over Islam". In the midst of all this, some columnists defending their right to have fun at the cost of a religious leader, even suggest that Muslims in Denmark and other countries in Europe could leave if they could not approve of such humour. In other words, they wanted the Muslims to be a party to ridicule their own Prophet in the name of "freedom of expression". The
question is whether these politicians and journalists in the West
have the courage to insist on their much-bragged-about media freedom
when it comes to Jews and their holocaust which some consider as
a myth cleverly exploited by the international Jewry to win world
sympathy to create Israel in Palestine. The
iron grip of the international Jewry on Europe has been so strong
that in many European countries such as Germany, France, Austria,
Switzerland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland and
Slovakia, there are holocaust denial laws in force making it a criminal
offence to deny the holocaust. So much so, that many European countries
wouldn't even allow an anti-Semitic book, however accurate it may
be, to be published. If this is how the Jewish political rights were protected, the inevitable question is why the Western media, preaching multi-culturalism, cannot learn to respect other religions and cultures. As rightly pointed out by Terry Davis, the head of leading human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe: "all freedoms, including the freedom of speech, come with responsibility". As pointed out by American-based Palestinian freelance writer Remi Kanazi, if a derogatory cartoon depicting Jesus or a Rabbi appears will the Western media outlets, including BBC and newspaper groups in Denmark, use it? The outrage would begin instantly and advertisers would pull out. Yet,
those in Denmark and their supporters around Europe call it freedom
of speech to have a cartoon of the prophet Muhammed. What did the Western media do when the United Nations, a mere tool of Western powers, imposed sanctions which killed more than 500,000 children in Iraq - a move that was justified by former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright as an exercise worthy to achieve their political goal? Where are the pictures of women raped and killed and men who were tortured and killed only because they happen to be Iraqis? Where was the Western media when the US troops, using banned napalm bombs, indiscriminately burnt and killed fasting Iraqi men and women and children in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. There were not even two paragraphs on an inside page. Where is the free press coverage concerning the daily Israeli killings of Palestinians whose lands were grabbed to settle Jews with US tax payers' money and European support? Where are the reports and pictures of unfortunate American soldiers returning home in coffins from Iraq? What is the plight of their loved ones? Their
governments won't allow the media to highlight these aspects fearing
a backlash. Where is journalistic honesty? The
question is: What Next? Iran? Where will this end? And what will
be the impact on humanity as a whole? |
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