Monday, February 20, 2006

'Mad Cartoon Flu' update

Julie Birchill wades in with a tirade against the oh-so liberal UK press with this memorable quote, "a sizable part of the print and broadcasting media are such guilt-ridden cretins when it comes to Islam that if they saw Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein sexually sharing their own grandmother, they'd swear the poor old lady asked for it."

Australian PM John Howard has strongly criticised the "fragment which is utterly antagonistic to our kind of society. You can't find any equivalent in Italian, or Greek, or Lebanese, or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia."

Yaqoob Quereshi, a minister in India’s Uttar Pradesh state government has offered a reward of $11.5 million to anyone who kills any of the infamous cartoonists.

Yaqoob is an official of the government of Uttar Pradesh, which has decided not to take action against him. A government spokesperson added that a prosecution would only be considered if one of the Dutch cartoonists themselves complained. Right....

Egyptian Sandmonkey reports that more people have died in 2006 from "mad cartoon syndrome" than from Bird flu. Something like 40 versus 16.

William Tucker of the american Enterprise Online has a nice idea, "let’s pick a day—I nominate February 28th, in which every newspaper and every TV news station in America will display the offending cartoons. For the faint-hearted there’ll be safety in numbers. It will inform the public and restore our self-respect. It certainly won’t ingratiate us with world of Islam, but what’s the difference? At least they’ll know they’re facing a united front."

Andrew Sullivan writes that the real blaspemy "is not Islamophobia but terrorism propogated under the banner of Islam."

The Telegraph publishes a poll showing 40% of British Muslims want Sharia Law and 20% sympathise with the 7/7 suicide bombers. Labour MP and Muslim, Sasiq Khan finds the findings "disturbing". Home Secretary, Charles Clarke blames modern Britain, "It is critically important to ensure that Muslims, and all faiths, feel part of modern British society. Today's survey indicates we still have a long way to go."

Patrick Sookhdeo warns in the Telegraph over the weekend that Sharia Law is already slipping into Britain adding that the government's appeasement policy is convincing radical clerics that they are wining the battle.