Garbanzo Toons

Muslim leaders urge restraint over cartoons.

Yep, that's what the headline read above this article in the Detroit Free Press. Here is the whole thing.

Michigan Muslims joined others in the Islamic world Friday in denouncing European newspapers that have published cartoons they say defame Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

Muslims spoke out against a cartoon that depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb, and others. Originally published in a Danish newspaper in the fall, some of the cartoons were reprinted in several other newspapers across Europe this week, in reports about the outrage and in editorials on free speech in secular societies.

Fueling the anger is the fact that Islamic law forbids the depiction of Muhammad, even positively, in order to prevent worshiping idols or people.

On Friday, thousands of people held loud demonstrations, with some in the Sudan and in Israel's West Bank calling for terrorist leader Osama bin Laden to strike back.

But in Michigan, the concern was restrained. There were no demonstrations. One leader, while saying the cartoons are in bad taste, urged Muslims not to overreact.

Still, they were upset.

"Freedom of speech and expression -- all those things are great and we need that -- but there should be some understanding that freedom of speech does not include defamation," said Victor Begg, 58, of Bloomfield Hills, who's an interfaith Muslim activist in Michigan. "It's just ignorant."

In Ypsilanti, Dawud Walid urged Muslims in his Friday sermon at the Masjid Ibrahim mosque not to react with hate.

Walid, director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he recounted the story of Muhammad's visit to a hostile village. The villagers stoned Muhammad but he didn't strike back and, eventually, they accepted Islam.

"What would Prophet Muhammad have done in a similar situation?" Walid said. Muhammad "encouraged us to be compassionate, tender and also patient. We should always take the moral high ground."

Walid and other Muslim leaders planned to meet Friday night at the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights to criticize the cartoons, but also urge restraint.

Last year, cartoons in the Detroit News and Oakland Press that negatively depicted Arabs and Islam upset local Muslims. Editors at both newspapers apologized for printing them. No American paper is known to have reprinted the European cartoons.

Pretty bland isn't it? Even the dishonest, self-serving quotes from local Muslim spokesliars are dull. If it weren't for other, nonprofessional sources of information, Detroit Free Press readers would be unaware of the massive violence going on in the name of censorship by Muslims against us infidels. Not to mention the extra spicy cartoons so thoughtfully added by Danish Terror Imam, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban. Add to that, thinly veiled threats of violence from Muslims in Europe and Australia.

Are local Detroit papers purposely trying to keep us in the dark, or are they afraid of the local Arab/Muslim community, the largest in the United States? Either way, I am certainly thankful for the legion of pajama-clad bloggers who are beholden to nobody, and are constantly gathering and synthesizing information that American newspapers are afraid to touch.

Labels: Danish Mohammed cartoons, Detroit Free Press

posted by Harry @ 9:33 PM