Mr. Pryce-Jones’s primary sources are the archives of the Quai itself. Although he thanks French friends for having “showed him the way through” this material, he deserves immense credit for unearthing incisive quotations and vignettes and then reconstructing the intricate network of affiliations within the Quai itself and within the French political establishment at large. The portrait he draws of French officialdom makes for vivid and devastating reading. 

 What first emerges out of Mr. Pryce-Jones’s investigation is the Quai’s enormous influence in modern France. Under the Third and Fourth Republics—from 1870 to 1940 and then from 1945 to 1958—the foreign ministry took advantage of a succession of weak cabinets to impose its own idea of France’s role in the world. Under the Fifth Republic—i.e., the current, presidential regime founded by Charles de Gaulle—the Quai d’Orsay virtually seized the executive’s diplomatic powers. A near monarch, the French president has to be a larger-than-life protagonist in world affairs, which turns him into a hostage to the Quai’s professionals—its elite civil-servant bureaucracy. The Quai also exercises a strong influence over public opinion, as Mr. Pryce-Jones shows, through France’s semi-official newspaper, Le Monde, and through the theoretically independent news service Agence France-Presse. 

To what purpose is all this power directed?

 Ever since Waterloo, the French foreign service’s self-imposed mission has been to restore French grandeur and to resist Anglo-Saxon “hegemony,” whether British or American. This goal has repeatedly pushed aside more mundane concerns, such as preparing to meet the threat of German expansion and Russian imperialism. In the 1890s, as Germany embarked on the policies that would lead to World War I, Gabriel Hanotaux, France’s foreign minister, devoted his energy obsessively to creating a French-German-Russian “continental Alliance” against the British Empire and the U.S.

  A corollary to this grand sense of national mission is the Quai’s conception of France as “an Arab power” or “a Muslim power.” During the heyday of European colonialism, such a self-conception meant carving out of Egypt, North Africa and the Levant an equivalent to British India. Today it means nearly the opposite: either serving the interests of radical Arab or Muslim governments or promoting the fusion of Europe and the Muslim world into an Islamic-dominated “Mediterranean” civilization. But perhaps such a reversal is not so striking: Even in the predatory 19th century, French diplomats entertained a romantic idea of Islam. To Hanotaux, France was the only European power “capable of acting without fatal contention but side by side with Muslim monotheism.”  

 Such outreach was accompanied by insular prejudice. In the course of the 19th century, French Jews were gradually accepted into industry, finance, politics and the arts, even the military. But the Quai was a different matter. In October 1893, Louis Herbette, the Quai’s secretary general, tersely remarked of one applicant (in a note quoted by Mr. Pryce-Jones): “I saw M. Grunebaum who spontaneously withdrew his request. He is indeed someone distinguished and highly to be recommended. He bowed with good grace to the motives dictating the Department’s decision.”

  As the Quai grew in size in the early 20th century, it finally admitted some Jews, but anti-Semitism remained rampant, as if ingrained in the bureaucracy’s culture. In the 1890s, most French diplomats had been ardent anti-Dreyfusards, contending (wrongly) that Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer, had committed treason on behalf of Germany. After World War I, French diplomats took a special interest in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” circulating in Europe for the first time, and ascribed both Bolshevism and Zionism to “Talmudic atavism.” In 1938, the Quai sabotaged the Evian conference on European refugees, the only diplomatic effort to alleviate the fate of now “stateless” German and Austrian Jews. Even after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was all too common in the French foreign service.  

 Under such circumstances, it was only natural for the Quai to adopt an anti-Zionist stand. De Gaulle famously cast aspersions on Israel in 1967, encouraged by his foreign minister, the former Vichy official Couve de Murville. (The Jews, de Gaulle declared at a press conference, are “an elite people, self-assured and domineering,” a people who show “a burning ambition for conquest.”) Any number of bitter episodes have followed since, right down to the one involving Daniel Bernard, the French ambassador to London who in 2003 called Israel a “sh--ty little country.”  

 And it isn’t only rhetoric. Mr. Pryce-Jones describes how, immediately after World War II, senior officers in the French foreign service conspired to rescue Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the former mufti of  erusalem, who had taken up residence in Nazi Germany during the war and who was answerable, upon Germany’s defeat, for various war crimes, including active support for the extermination of the Jews. The French, having sheltered him in Paris for months, eventually let him escape to Egypt in 1946 carrying a forged passport.  

True, the Quai has suffered setbacks. Some political leaders, rejecting its biases, have undertaken more balanced policies. But the Quai’s ill effects persist, especially in the form of what Mr. Pryce-Jones drily calls “the harvest.” The Quai’s flirtation with Islam over the years resulted in official France turning a blind eye to the mass immigration of Arabs and Muslims. The result, today, is street violence, ethnic rioting and terrorist activity.

 Mr. Pryce-Jones is right to call his book “Betrayal.”It is not just Israel or the  Jews who have been betrayed, but France itself.  

The World as Seen on the Seine 
By Michel Gurfinkiel
Thursday, November 16, 2006 
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 
Mr. Gurfinkiel is the president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Paris.  
  http://www.europeinstitute.org/






  





Article #2

The Islamization of France
Written By Jean-Christophe Mounicq
 
 
 If Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” theory is right, France is on the front line. With at least six and maybe eight million Muslims living in its territory among a total population of 60 million, France is the most “islamized” Western country. Seeing France’s inability to adapt to globalization or to the aging of its population, it could be bad news for the world that the French are the first to be forced to facilitate the emergence of a “modern” Islam.

As nearly every Western country absorbs a fast growing Muslim minority, every Westerner should look closely at France. A French failure to integrate Muslims could lead to a general European and Western failure. Those who don’t believe in the clash of civilizations might at least see a clash between traditional Islamic values and Western republican values. This raises the question of the compatibility of Islam with secular democracy (separation of church and state) and human rights (especially the rights of women and of non-Muslims).
 
All Muslims do not interpret the Koran identically and do not practice the same forms of Islam. But which Islam is going to win in Western countries? Even if they do not say it openly, more and more French citizens fear an Islamist victory that could lead to religious and civil war. The vote in favour of Jean-Marie Le Pen is emblematic of this fear. Locally, votes in favour of the National Front are linked to the proportion of Muslim immigrants in the population.
 
Stephen Schwartz, in his book The Two Faces of Islam, has an optimistic view of the Islamic question and believes any problems stem from the radical Wahabist sect. The Saudis finance most mosques and Islamic schools all over the world. This leads to a worrisome preponderance of Wahabi influence over Muslim thought. One has to admire the courage of Schwartz, whose fight against Islamo-fascism is of extreme importance.
 
Schwartz thinks Islam is essentially a religion of “tolerance” and that Mohammed was a “man of peace”. Yes and no. Muslims do tolerate others but they also give them an inferior status. Mohammed was a man of peace but also a warrior. The beliefs of Mr Schwartz are so strong that he converted to Islam. His choice certainly demonstrates one solution to preventing a clash of civilization.
 
As every non-Muslim may not be in the mood to convert, and as every Muslim does not adhere to the same peaceful reading of the Koran, one may be permitted a more  pessimistic view. The overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But from Bali to Riyadh, from Karachi to Jerusalem, from Moscow to New York most terrorists are Muslims. In his book Why I Am Not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq, born Muslim, contends that “all Muslims still take the Koran literally” and hence “there is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism”. It is certain that, as Bernard Lewis wrote, “the creed and political program of Islamic fundamentalist are not compatible with liberal democracy.”
 
So what percentage of Muslims is fundamentalist? From Algeria to Turkey, when Muslims are free to vote, Islamists regularly win 30 to 40 percent of the votes. In France… the result was no different. In May 2003, the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, organized elections for a Representative Council of French Muslims. The Islamists of the UOIF (Union des Organisations Islamistes de France) won over 40 percent of the votes.
 
This election was a major failure for Sarkozy, who wanted to promote moderate Muslim leaders like Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Mosque of Paris. Before the elections Dalil Boubakeur denounced “the Islam of the suburbs, the Islam of the excited” and was anxious about “more and more young going from the suburbs to Peshawar”. He asked “Why shave the beards in Kabul while cultivating them in the Paris area?”
 
The result of the election, which took place among Mosque-goers who are more fundamentalist than “average” Muslims, was to give power to the president of the UOIF — who wears a beard and asserts that “our constitution is Koran” — a way to reject the constitution of France and live according to Islamic (Sharia) law clearly opposed to French law. The problem with Islam is that it is not only a religion but also an ideology that intends to rule man’s life on earth.
 
Was the victory of the Islamists really a surprise given the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism, mainly instigated by young Arabs, in France? After 9/11, in the 19th Arrondissement of Paris, many blew their automobile horns loudly. After the beginning of the new Intifada in Israel, thousands shouted openly “death to the Jews” in Strasbourg. During the Iraqi war, thousands waved portraits of Saddam, Israeli flags with Nazi emblems and Bush portraits with Hitler’s moustache.
 
A stranger may wonder at the lack of French reaction. Is it because the Catholic French are also anti-American and anti-Semitic? The answer is: no. It is more a mixture of laziness (”we’ll see later”), fear (”do not provoke Muslims, they may become terrorists”), bad conscience (”Crusades, colonies, unemployment”), optimism (”we will invent the best system”) and difficulty confronting reality.
 
Economics plays a major role in the “Muslim problem”. The overwhelming poverty in Middle Eastern and North African countries, ruled for centuries by Islam, drives their populations to desperation. The Islamists, nostalgic for the glorious past of the Caliphates, place the blame for these conditions mainly on Westerners, rejecting the fact that the problem has its roots in the failure of their own societies. With one of the highest unemployment levels for youth among OECD countries, France is in a bad position to provide a model of integration.
 
Many Muslims came to France only to benefit from the state welfare system, get free social housing, free school, free Medicare, and family allocations but with no desire to adapt to French rule of law. Last July, Sarkozy passed a bill intended to control immigration networks and to stop some Muslim customs: polygamy, excision, repudiation and forced marriage. One hopes that he will be more successful than with the election of his Islamic council. If the Islamization of France goes on it will accelerate the clash of civilization.
http://techcentralstation.com/121503A.html

                                                                                                                                                     
Background Article #3
Red-Green Anti-Semitism 
by Jean-Christophe Mounicq December 15, 2003
The recent outburst of anti-Semitism in Europe has little to do with the sad history of European prejudice. The new anti-Semitism is not due to a resurgence of far-right activism or neo-Nazism. Recent anti-Semitic acts have been proven to be of Muslim-Arab origin and have more to do with the Islamization of Europe. On 2 December, the World Jewish Congress brought more evidence of this green anti-Semitism by making public a disputed report kept under wraps by the European Union. 

If European authorities are not facing up to anti-Jewish sentiment among Muslim immigrants in Europe, it is partly because this new anti-Semitism capitalizes on the "politically correct" anti-Israeli bias currently in vogue in the EU, a bias promoted by many European politicians. 
European politicians also have trouble admitting that it is bolstered by the steady and uncontrolled immigration of Muslims since the 1960s and the spreading of Radical Islam by and among immigrants. This is another result of political correctness which impeaches any criticism of the sources of anti-Semitism. Being the result of political correctness linked to leftist bias of the media, the new anti-Semitism may also be qualified as Red. 

Contemporary political correctness defines any limits on immigration as racism. Any political leader, intellectual or "normal" citizen, who suggests that immigration should be controlled through the application of law or who advocates repatriation of illegal immigrants is denounced as a racist. It is sometimes even considered outrageous to suggest that immigrants should obey the laws of their host country. "We cannot obey this law because it is incompatible with the Koran" is a claim heard more and more often from Muslims. "Native Europeans" often seem ready to abandon their principles to avoid conflict.

Airplanes full of illegal immigrants sent back to their native country have been compared, by French intellectuals, journalists and political activists, to the trains that carried Jews to Dachau. Thus a former French interior minister, Jean-Louis Debré, who carried out this policy, was portrayed as a Nazi despite being of Jewish origin himself. This attitude was termed as "Reductio ad Hitlerum" by philosopher Leo Strauss. The sophism might be caricatured as: Hitler loved dogs; X loves dogs; thus X is a disciple of Hitler.
Any criticism of the culture of any immigrant is also viewed as racist. The only permissible criticism seems to be that which is directed against Western civilization. Bad Westerners are portrayed as the only violent colonizers and evil invaders of all history.
Anyone who dares to recall certain facts -- Mohammed was a warrior, conquests by Muslims were made by the sword, violence is allowed and sometimes recommended by the Koran -- is viewed as Islamophobic. The Muslim world, which suffered from the Crusades and has been colonized, is "good." And their law and customs are "good" too. 

Few dare to mention that Muslims have also colonized, tortured and slaughtered million, that the Turks were responsible for the first genocide of the 20th century with the extermination of 1.4 million Christian Armenians, that during World War II many Muslim leaders including the Great Mufti of Jerusalem, al Hadj al Husseini, helped the Nazis to constitute Muslim SS divisions, and that Christians still today are stigmatized and repressed throughout the Muslim world.

As many books written by French teachers show, young French Muslims frequently deny the fact of Nazi genocide against Europe's Jews. Muslim clerics, frequently backed by their governments, continue to disseminate the medieval forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," also a favorite of such salubrious organizations as the Ku Klux Klan.

Political correctness also insists that communism, socialism and leftist radicalism are good. Conservatism and the Right are bad. They created Fascism and Nazism (when actually both are forms of totalitarian Socialism). Bush and Sharon are from the Right. They are evil. Their countries are both capitalist and rich. Thus bad. Rich Israelis and Americans from the right are attacking poor Palestinians and Iraqis. This leads to the portrayal of Israeli and American leaders as "Nazis."

The condemnation of Nazi Germany, a totalitarian and powerful state with a strong army, brought into vogue the condemnation of any national state. "With the Six Day War, the Israelis demonstrated their capacity for power. For the anti-Semite, the Jews once considered weak and stateless came to be viewed as strong and nationalist," writes Gilles William Goldnadel in Le Nouveau Bréviaire de la Haine (new breviary of hate). The Israeli state built around one religion and defended by a strong army became the hated state. 


This idea explains why Israel is viewed by 59 percent of Europeans as the country which most endangers world peace. Repeated by Islamists and leftists, the "green-red" alliance, Anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic remarks are widely spread during leftist anti-globalization rallies that are always pro-Palestinian. The revealed European report noted that: "Often this generated a combination of anti-Zionist and anti-American views that formed an important element in the emergence of an anti-Semitic mood in Europe."

The consequences are that "Jewish communities are once again victims of hostile acts in an atmosphere of relative indifference," writes Goldnadel. The latest fire in a French Jewish school in Bondy illustrates this point. French authorities have firmly condemned such acts. But they have not dared to denounce those responsible, young French Arabs, and have taken no action to prevent any further acts.

Rabbi Marvin Hier is right to say that "shocking poll results, showing that European popular opinion is that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, bigger than North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan, defies logic." But is it "a racist fantasy?" Today, racism is only apparent when one suggests that a Muslim or an Arab country is dangerous.

Ancient anti-Semitism is still alive in Europe. The recent declarations of German General Reinhard Gunzel and German Parliamentarian Martin Hohmann demonstrate this clearly. Hohman called the Jews "a nation of perpetrators responsible for millions of murders in the name of socialism and Bolshevism" because Marx, Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev were Jewish. Never mind that Lenin and Stalin were not Jewish and murdered thousands of Jewish communists.  This old anti-Semitism from the Right is progressively disappearing. The new anti-Semitism comes from the Left. 



 
Eerily echoing the voice of the defunct Soviet Union, anti-Israelism today is the most powerful modern vector of anti-Semitism. Since World War II, anti-Semites have attacked the Jewish state as a substitute for the Jewish people. One may notice that intellectuals from the Left who propagate anti-Israelism and political correctness are often Jewish themselves. But the overwhelming numbers of anti-Semitic acts in Europe are of Arab-Muslim immigrant origin.  










































   
To avoid debate on these facts, as the EU is doing, is counterproductive. On 19 November, one French Jewish disc jockey was murdered by an Arab Muslim. The murderer was proud of "having eliminated one Jewish scum from the earth." To prevent any debate, French authorities said the Arab was "psychologically disturbed." Maybe. But are other crimes from "less psychologically disturbed" Muslims needed before Muslims and the Left are called to task?

Being a leftist, an immigrant, an Arab and/or a Muslim does not automatically put one on the side of the angels. One has the right to question Leftists and Muslims on their anti-Semitism. European and Muslim media should stop characterizing Israel as a Nazi state. This is not only a question of justice. It is a necessity if one doesn't want the new anti-Semitism to spread and the worst to come. 
http://techcentralstation.com/121503A.html

  
France to train imams in 'French Islam'       (Background Article #4)
Jon Henley in Paris
Friday April 23, 2004
The Guardian 


The French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, said yesterday that the country must urgently begin training Muslim clerics in a moderate Islam that respects human rights and the republican code. 

Addressing a meeting of local prefects a day after he deported an Algerian imam who was in favour of stoning women, Mr De Villepin said they should not think twice about expelling any foreign preacher who advocated violence, hatred, racism or human rights abuses. 

But he said France had to "face the issue of training imams. I ask you to help the Muslim faith get organised better and more quickly so that a real 'French Islam' can emerge." 
The problem of radical Islamic clerics preaching a message contrary to French law and values is a pressing one: government figures show 27 Muslim prayer leaders have been deported on public order or human rights grounds since 2001 - more than half of them since last July. 

Abdelkader Bouziane, the 52-year-old imam of a Lyon mosque, said in an interview that the Koran authorised husbands to hit their wives, that polygamy was right, that women were not men's equals and that music was a sin. 

Asked whether he approved of the stoning of unfaithful wives, he replied: "Yes." 
He was deported on Wednesday, a week after Abdelkader Yahia Cherif. The self-proclaimed imam of Brest in Brittany had asked his congregation to "rejoice in the Madrid bombings" that killed 191 people. 


According to the interior ministry, France's 5 million-strong Muslim community, Europe's largest, is ministered to by between 1,000 and 1,500 imams. Only 10% of them are believed to be citizens, less than half speak French, and "probably a majority" are illegal immigrants. Most hail from abroad - 40% from Morocco, 24% from Algeria, 16% from Turkey and 6% from Tunisia - where any advanced religious training they receive is increasingly likely to be in fundamentalist Islamist views that clash with secular French laws. 


"The majority of imams preaching in France are self-taught or have had no formal religious education," said Abdellah Boussouf, an imam from Strasbourg who is working on a training scheme to be run by France's moderate National Muslim Council. 

He said Muslim imams in France should have a modern education - ideally a university education in both social sciences and Koranic studies - as the best guarantee of the religion's "harmonious future existence within a modern and secular western state". 
Dalil Boubakeur, chairman of the Muslim Council and rector of the Paris Grand Mosque, condemned the Lyon imam's comments. 

"Islam is not a religion that beats its women, kills its babies, and wants the west dead," he said. He acknowledged it was up to the Muslim community to take responsibility for training "homegrown" imams who were familiar with French life. But he said little would be achieved without state aid - which could contravene France's strict laws on the separation of church and state. 

In the meantime, many experts warn that fundamentalist Islam is making increasing headway in France's still overwhelmingly moderate Muslim community. A report by undercover police said 32 imams in the Paris region could now be considered radical. 

One expert on Islam in France, Antoine Sfeir, said radical foreign imams often found an all too willing audience in France's rundown immigrant suburbs. "The kids there already watch Arab stations on satellite TV, with their bloodthirsty slogans and anti-western propaganda," he said. "They've already been totally radicalised." 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1201448,00.html


  
(Background Article #5)
German Plan to Integrate Muslims Into Society
GERMANY, November 24 , 2004
(IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – 

Germany has proposed an action plan to fight extremism and promote Muslim integration into German society. 

Releasing a 20-point strategy to step up the Muslim integration into society, German integration minister Marieluise Beck told a press conference Tuesday, November 23, that imams coming into Germany should have a knowledge of the German language and society. 

Beck, also a member of the German Greens Party, said that the training courses for Muslim imams in German education centers will include language lessons and education in German cultural and legal norms. “Muslim spiritual leaders should serve as social bridge builders,” Beck was quoted by Deutsche Welle as saying. 

Beck added that courses to teach German to immigrants, funded by local authorities, would be imperative for all immigrants from the next year. Some 16-18 thousand immigrants are expected to attend the German education courses, according to unofficial estimates. Beck also voiced support to enlist all mosques in the European country.

 
Islam is Germany's third most popular religion after Protestant and Catholic Christianity. 
There are some 3.4 million Muslims in Germany, including 220,000 in Berlin. An estimated two thirds of them are of Turkish origin.


Last month, Germany’s mass-circulation Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said Germans reverting to Islam have risen dramatically in the past few years and are keen on leaving their indelible marks on society. 

Clearing Stereotypes 




 

The German minister further urged hardliners not to circulate stereotypes about Islam and the Muslim community as intolerant and not forthcoming. “We run the danger of destroying the progress we've already made in living side by side,” she said. “Claims that Islam is unmatchable with the German constitution are groundless and run counter to spirit of pluralism.” A recent study by the think tank RWI showed that among the children and grandchildren of the first wave of Muslim immigrants to Germany, a sense of pessimism and feelings of exclusion are on the increase, Deutsche Welle said. 

Beck further called for placing more restriction on anti-Semitism laws and other Internet materials inciting racial hatred.  She also added that Muslim imams inciting hatred in the German society should be “punished.” 
A study conducted by the University of Bielefeld’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence had shown that Islamophobia was on the rise in Germany. Former German president Johannes Rau has said that Muslims in Germany should not be treated as second-class citizens. 

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/24/article05.shtml

 
(Background Article #6)
Danish Muslims Rebel Against Imams
From the desk of Hjörtur Gudmundsson on Sun, 2006-02-05

 






Yesterday the newly established network of moderate Danish Muslims urged Danish imams, who insist Muslims are being treated badly in Denmark, to move to other countries with societies more in harmony with their own view on the world. “If these imams think it is so terrible to live in Denmark, then why do they remain here?” Naser Khader, the leader of the network and a member of the Danish Parliament for the Social Liberal Party (Radikale), said in an interview with the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.

“After all no one is forcing them to [live in Denmark]. They can always move to one of the countries in the Middle East which are based on the Muslim values they insist on living by. It seems that their loyalty is mainly to countries such as Saudi Arabia, so I think they should move there. I am tired of hearing them complain about the situation in this country which has given them shelter, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and tons of opportunities for their children. If they cannot be loyal to the values of this country they should leave and by that do the majority of Danish Muslims a big favour. The imams should stop critizising the cartoons and instead critizise the terrorists that cut the throats of innocent hostages in the name of Allah and therefore abuse Islam. But on such occasions we never hear a word from them. Hence, they are hypocrites.”Mr Khader also condemned the attacks on the Danish embassy in Damascus and urged all sides to immediately start finding a solution to the issue. 

Meanwhile the radical imams have been exposed as liars, saying one thing to the Western media and exactly the opposite to the Arab press. In the Western media they call for an easing of tensions, while at the same time they keep inciting hatred in the Arab media.

Imam Abu Laban, the leader of the radical Danish Muslim organizations protesting the cartoons, said on Danish TV2 that he urged the Muslim world to abandon the boycott of Denmark, but told Al-Jazeera that „one could only be pleased“ with the boycott. Imam Abu Bashar told Jyllands-Posten that the cartoon affair was an issue between Muslims and the newspaper and not between Muslims and the Danish government. However, in the Saudi newspaper Al Watan he critizised the Danish government for not apologizing for the cartoons. Imam Mahmoud Fouad Al-Barazi said at a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen that he wanted to advance better integration, but in an interview with the Egyptian daily Al Ahram criticized Danish kindergartens for “indoctrinating” Muslim children with Danish culture.


Yesterday the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet, which had previously critizied Jyllands-Posten for publishing the Muhammad cartoons, honoured Jyllands-Posten with an award in defence of freedom of expression. The Danes are shocked by the ransacking and torching of their embassy in Damascus, the capital of Syria, which is one of the Arab totalitarian dictatorships where people do not lift a finger without permission from the regime. The Danish Foreign Minister, Per Stig Møller, said that the behaviour of the Syrian government is totally unacceptable. It had actively incited unrest. On Saturday the Danish ambassador in Damascus asked the Syrian authorities several times for protection, but received none.

In London, too, during the past two days, extremist Muslims have been staging protests in front of the Danish embassy. Depite carrying signs like “Behead those who insult Islam” and “Whoever insults a prophet kill him,” despite being masked, despite calling for suicide bombings, despite extolling the virtues of the 9/11 hijackers, Bin Laden, and the “fantastic 4” who bombed the London subway last July, none of the protesters were arrested. The only arrests were two counter-protesters who held up cartoons of Muhammad. Perhaps the latter were arrested for being disrespectful? On Friday the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had said that showing Muhammad cartoons was “disrespectful.”


Yesterday Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of would-be European Turkey, said that freedom of expression should be restricted. “The cartoons of Muhammad are an assault on our spiritual values. There must be a limitation on freedom of the press,” he said. The president of would-be nuclear Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ordered all trade agreements revoked with countries where the Muhammad cartoons have been published. Some time in the future, he might launch nuclear missiles at them. An imam in Gaza City told 9,000 worshippers that the people responsible for the drawings should have their heads cut off. He received the support of Mahmoud Zaher, one of the leaders of Palestine’s largest party Hamas. Mr Zahar said that those who publish cartoons of Muhammad deserve to die.


The Danish illustrators who drew the original twelve cartoons have received numerous death threats during the past days and are reported to be in hiding under massive 24 hour police surveillance. Muslim organizations in France intend to sue all French media which have published cartoons of the prophet. This includes the newspapers France Soir and Le Monde. The editor of France Soir was sacked this week by the paper’s owner. Yesterday the staff of France Soir demanded that he be reinstated. In the Netherlands the Dutch daily De Volkskrant received a bomb threat after publishing the cartoons earlier this week. The Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, said that people who object to the publication of the cartoons should take the case to court. “We have freedom of expression here. There is no room for threats and for people who want to play the role of judges,” Mr Balkenende said. The cartoons have been republished from Greenland to New Zealand.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/758