Story from New York Post.com
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006
By AMIR TAHERI
'A BLESSING from God": So have Iran's leaders, starting with
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, described the controversy
over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
A closer look at the row, however, shows that the whole
rigmarole was launched by Sunni-Salafi groups in Europe and
Asia, with Ahmadinejad and his Syrian vassal, President
Bashar al-Assad, belatedly playing catch-up. God had
nothing to do with it.
To see how the whole thing was manufactured to serve precise
political ends, consider the chronology of events:
The cartoons were published last September and, for more
than three months, caused no ripples outside small groups of
Salafi militants in Denmark.
In December, a group of Danish Muslim militants filled their
suitcases with photocopies of the cartoons and embarked on a
tour of Muslim capitals.
They failed to get to Tehran: The Iranians, being Shi'ites,
saw them as Sunni activists bent on mischief. But they
managed to go to Cairo, Damascus and Beirut and, were
allowed to send emissaries to Saudi Arabia.
The Danish Muslim group also did something dishonest — it
added a number of far more derogatory cartoons of the
Prophet to the 12 published by the Jyllands-Posten
newspaper, and misled its interlocutors in Muslim capitals
into believing that all had appeared in the Danish press.
In Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood told the Danish group that
this was not the time to kick a fuss over the cartoons. The
brotherhood was busy plotting its election strategy and
pretending to be a "moderate" political party. The last
thing it wanted was to be branded as a rabid anti-West
force. The brotherhood leaders suggested that the matter be
put on ice until January.
The Danish militants also received a negative reply from
Hamas, the Palestinian radical movement. Hamas was busy
trying to win a general election and needed to reassure at
least part of the Palestinian middle classes. The Hamas
advice was: Wait until after we have won.
The emissaries found a more sympathetic audience in Qatar —
where the satellite-TV channel Al Jazeera (owned by the
emir) specializes in inciting Muslims against the West and
democracy in general. The channel's chief Islamist
televangelist, Yussuf al-Qaradawi (an Egyptian preacher who
is also a friend of Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London),
was all too keen to issue a "fatwa" to light the fuse. He
then mobilized his network of Muslim Brotherhood militants
in Europe to attack the cartoons and claim, falsely, that
images were not allowed in Islam and that the Danish paper
had violated "an absolute principle of The Only True Faith."
Thus the call for Jihad received its supposed "theological"
green light. (Ironically, the section of the brotherhood
headed by al-Qaradawi is financed by the European Union as a
non-governmental organization.)
As the first rent-a-mob crowds appeared on global TV
screens, Ahmadinejad realized that here was a cow worth
milking.
For Denmark is set to assume the rotating presidency of the
U.N. Security Council — at the very time that the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to
refer Iran to the Security Council and demand sanctions.
What better, for Tehran's purposes, than to portray Denmark
as "an enemy of Islam" and mobilize Muslim sympathy against
the Security Council?
To regain the initiative from the Sunni-Salafi groups,
Ahmadinejad quickly ordered a severing of commercial ties
with Denmark, thus portraying the Islamic Republic as the
Muslim world's leader in the anti-Danish campaign.
Syria was next to jump on the bandwagon, again for mercenary
reasons.
The United Nations wants Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
and five of his relatives and aides, including his younger
brother, for questioning in the murder of Lebanon's former
premier, Rafiq al-Hariri. (Assad has tried to negotiate
immunity for himself and his brother in exchange for handing
over the others — but the U.N. wouldn't play.) As with
Iran's nuclear program, the Syrian dossier will reach the
Security Council under Danish presidency.
To portray Denmark as "an enemy of the Prophet" would not be
such a bad thing when the council, as expected, points the
finger at Assad and his regime as responsible for a series
of political murders, including that of Hariri.
The Danish-cartoons cow will also be milked in another way:
Tehran and Damascus have launched a diplomatic campaign to
put the issue of "protecting religions against blasphemy" on
the Security Council agenda. If that were to happen, issues
such as Iran's quest for the atomic bomb and Syria's murder
machine in Lebanon might be pushed aside, at least as far as
world public opinion is concerned.
People watching TV news may think that the whole Muslim
world is ablaze with righteous rage translated into
"spontaneous demonstrations." The truth is that the
overwhelming majority of Muslims, even if offended by
cartoons which they have not seen, have stayed away from the
street shows put on by the radicals and the Iranian and
Syrian security services.
The destruction of Danish and Norwegian embassies and
consulates happened in only two places: Damascus and Beirut.
Anyone who knows Syria would know that there are no
spontaneous demonstrations in that dictatorship. (Even then,
the Syrian secret police failed to attract more than 1,000
rent-a-mob militants.) And the Syrian government refused the
Norwegian Embassy's request for additional police
protection. It was clear that the Syrians wanted the
embassies sacked.
The rent-a-mob attacks in Beirut were more cynical. The
Syrian Ba'ath - which has been murdering, imprisoning or
deporting Sunni-Salafi militants for years — was suddenly
transformed from a radical secular and Socialist party into
"the Vanguard of the Faith." The mob that committed the
atrocities in Beirut was bused from Syria and consisted of
Muslim Brotherhood militants who are never allowed to
demonstrate on their own account.
The Muslim crowds that have demonstrated over the cartoons
seldom exceeded a few hundred; the Muslim segment of
humanity is estimated at 1.2 billion. And only three of
Denmark's embassies in 57 Muslim countries have been
attacked.
The Danish Muslim gang who lied by adding cartoons that had
never been published has done more damage to the Prophet and
to Islam than the 12 controversial cartoonists of
Jyllands-Posten.
The fight between Denmark and its detractors is not between
the West and Islam. It is between democracy and a global
fascist movement masquerading as religion.
Iranian author Amir Taheri is a member of Benador
Associates.
https://www.nypost.com/useradmin/useradmin.htm
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To the Editor, for op-ed publication, 1,143 words (2/9/06):
It is rapidly becoming clear that the "cartoon Intifada" is
a hoax.
It is not the spontaneous rage of offended Moslems. It is a
faux crisis fabricated by the Danish Imams and Syria, whose
goals are to create:
a.) intimidation to squash western free speech and any
artistic creativity that might be critical of Moslem
terrorism.
b.) a smokescreen to take Iran off of the front pages, and
diffuse the international movement against its WMD designs.
c.) a high-profile incendiary show of fervent support and
protection for Islam by any regime, especially a secular one
like Syria that wants to out-extreme the extremists.
Consider the following:
1.) The original cartoons are not anywhere near as horrific
as the cartoons that have appeared regularly in Moslem press
throughout the world for decades, demonizing Jews, Israel
and Christians. Yet there are no Moslems apologizing for
these hate-laden cartoons.
No civilized nation can contend that it has the right to
insult anyone but then deny that same right to everyone
else.
2.) The Danish Imams that brought the cartoons to the
attention of political leaders in Arab countries forged
three new cartoons, pretending that these too were part of
the Danish collection. These forged cartoons were indeed
insulting characterizations of Mohammed as a pig, having sex
with children, and being anally penetrated by a goat -- far
more horrific than the rather mild Danish spoofs.
The Imams knew that the Danish cartoons were not so bad. So
they had to forge some fake really bad ones in order to get
the desired response from their audiences.
3.) The assertion that Islam bans pictures of Mohammed is a
lie. There is a centuries-old tradition of depicting
Mohammed in art. Cf. <http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/>
for a collection of hundreds of years of Moslem art
depicting Mohammed. Moreover, none of the figures in the
cartoons are necessarily Mohammed. This lie was necessary
in order to fabricate an explanation for the extreme Moslem
rage.
4.) The hypocrisy of these violent demonstrations has not
found _expression in western media, but it should. This
hypocrisy belies the sincerity of these demonstrations. How
can any civilized society be passive, or even supportive,
when their leaders kill millions of their own (Saddam
Hussein killed c. 1,300,000 Moslems in his 32 years of
violent despotism), or when their co-religionists bomb
mosques with hundreds of Moslem worshippers inside them (as
have the Sunni terrorists in Iraq).....and yet that same
society explodes into paroxysms of violence, murder, threats
of genocide, and outraged self-righteous fury when a Qur'an
is purported to be mishandled, or a newspaper publishes
harmless cartoons?
5.) The timing is odd. The cartoons were first published
in September. They were re-published in an Egyptian
journal, El-Farg, with provocative headlines, on October 17;
but elicited no response. Only after a summit meeting in
Mecca in December did the cartoon issue go ballistic. In
Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official
news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations
that ended with Danish embassies in flames.
6.) As the issue catapulted from a local Danish kafuffle to
an international incident of incendiary proportions in
December, the Danish imams were at it again: this time with
lies that the Danish newspaper had actually published not
just 12 but 120 cartoons, that the paper was a government
mouthpiece, that the Danish government was sponsoring a
massive Qur’an burning party, and that the government was
planning to make a movie blaspheming Mohammed.
All pure fiction -- but very effective in heightening the
furore and inciting the Moslem “street” to even greater
violence and hatred.
7.) In a later publication, El-Farg editors wrote, in
opportunistic hindsight, that "…It would have been better
that this [current] holy war against Denmark been launched
during the holy month of Ramadan (October) …This
irrelevant….timing is but a sign that this violent response
to the cartoons is politically motivated by Muslim
extremists in Europe and the so-called secular governments
of the Middle East.”.
So, at least to the editors at El-Farg, the ‘cartoon
Intifada’ is a jihad, which should have started in October.
And the delay is evidence that the current “holy war against
Denmark” is a political ploy.
In sum, the current "cartoon Intifada", with its death (to
date, at least 10 Moslems have been killed in Afghanistan
riots, a Catholic priest murdered, and scores injured) and
destruction, threats of genocide and terrorism, hatred and
intimidation, is all the product of Moslem leaders'
manipulation.
Now, why would anyone do that?
The anti-Syrian coalition in Lebanon has accused the Syrian
government of starting the riots. Young Bashir is deeply
beholden to Iran. So one must look to Iran as the source of
the conspiracy-like process that has set the Moslem world
aflame.
But, what could be Iran's motives?
Thanks to a recent USA/EU/UN/Egyptian agreement for a
nuclear-free Middle East, Iran will now be able to link its
compliance with UN/EU/USA demands for a halt to its nuclear
ambitions to the West’s pressuring Israel to dismantle, or
at least disclose to the IAEA, Israel's own nuclear
program. That is what a nuclear-free Middle East means.
The obvious question that Iran and other Moslem countries
can now raise is: why are you attacking Iran about its
embryonic nuclear program which they say is meant for
peaceful usages; when you let Israel get away with building
a whole arsenal of nuclear WMDs with delivery systems which
are clearly, and avowedly, for military purposes? Curtail
Israel and Iran will stand down.
Brilliant. Ahmedi-Nejad may be crazy, but he is not stupid.
And the cartoon crisis explodes with perfect timing.
Thanks to this new “jihad against Denmark”, the West is
shown very clearly just what it means to get the Moslem
world angry. If this is how they act when some cartoonists
blaspheme, how do you think they will act if the West does
not follow through and show 'even handedness' and
'fairness' by pressuring Israel just as much, or more, than
it pressures Iran?
Now that the West knows what price there is to pay for
stoking the ire of the Moslem world, not only will all
western cartoonists be far more circumspect and
self-censuring, but so will other artists, journalists,
analysts, historians, Middle East scholars, diplomats, and
governments.
When the Egyptian Ambassador to Denmark departed, following
Egypt's decision to cut off diplomatic relations in the wake
of the cartoon crisis, his parting words were "Denmark must
do something to appease the Moslem world!”
What sort of appeasement might he have in mind? What could
Denmark do that would calm the savage wrath of the Moslem
world whose delicate religious sensibilities have been
ravaged by these cartoons?
Will we soon see Denmark leading a diplomatic charge in the
UN to suspend action against Iran until Israel has divested
itself of its WMDs?
David Meir-Levi
873 Santa Cruz Avenue (#202)
Menlo Park, CA USA 94025
650 566 3811, 650 322 6638
