Old Mother Ashby wrote:

>
> Quite so. Where has there been the most violent reaction? Iran, a
> country where you can be imprisoned for merely expressing an opinion
> that is not government approved. You can find loutish young men willing
> to riot anywhere, but normally the authorities don't encourage them,
> they jail them (after the police have given them a kicking). The Iranian
> government has something to gain from all the fuss, don't they?

I am not sure that Iran is the worst. It's bad, but so is Saudi Arabia. The
thing is that this particular culture thrives on censorship and physical
intimidation. IMO these riots are designed to intimidate the west not to dare
to portray Islam as practised for what it is and I am glad that places like
Denmark will take a stand against it by refusing to censor their press. Today
it's images of the Prophet. Tomorrow it could be daring to speak out against
female genital mutilation.

>
>
> Indonesia is the largest Moslem nation on earth, but there have been no
> reports of any trouble at all. Indonesia has been through unsettling
> times since Soeharto was deposed, and there has been a growth of Saudi
> funded religious extremist groups who have committed some terrible
> atrocities.

Like 9/11? That is where most of the 9/11 terrorists came from. That is where
most of the Taliban came from.

> The Indonesian government has no interest in fomenting
> unrest, neither do the Malaysians, a thoroughly authoritarian lot. Many
> of their citizens may be offended by the idea of the cartoons, but
> that's as far as it goes.

Hopefully, they would be content to rest assured that Allah will deal with the
infidels on his own in the afterlife. I would grant them the right to be that
smug. To react by committing acts of violence and arson is totally
unacceptable.


> Nobody has mentioned the worst part of the Iranian reaction to the
> cartoons. One of their newspapers has announced a retaliatory
> competition for cartoons about - wait for it - the Holocaust. So, upset
> by the officially Lutheran Danes, the Iranians decide to go in for a
> spot of anti-semitism. You know what they say: if something is wrong,
> it's the fault of either the cyclists or the Jews.

What do you expect from a who react to a depiction of them as violent by
committing acts of violence?