Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Different reactions

The War of the Danish Cartoons goes on and on, though the main battles are over. The Islamic Faith Community, an umbrella organisation of 27 radical Muslim organisations in Denmark is lodging a complaint with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), who, presumably has no other problems in the in-tray at the moment.

Meanwhile, through the Little Green Footballs site one finds a story on the BBC website that tells us that the Archbishop of Wales has ordered the recall of 500 copies of the Church of Wales magazine, whose editor has resigned, because it had the temerity to publish a cartoon that included the Prophet Mohammed.

This was not one of the Danish cartoons, let alone one of the three pictures, forged by the Danish imams or their sidekicks, but

“The drawing - which was from the French magazine France Soir - shows the Prophet Muhammad sitting on a heavenly cloud with Buddha, and Christian and Jewish deities.

He is being told "don't complain... we've all been caricatured here".”

The Archbishop saw fit to grovel, though not to the Jews or Buddhists or, for that matter, the Christians of Wales.

“The article was perfectly OK, but for some reason, the editor decided to print one of these cartoons which was a gross error of judgement.

"It no way reflects the policy of the church in Wales and when I saw it I was totally horrified.

"We recalled all the papers, I personally picked up some from some churches and they have all been pulped.

"I've unreservedly apologised to my Muslim colleagues and they've been very gracious and I've said to them this in no way reflects the policy or attitude in the Church in Wales.”

How nice to know that they were gracious. Did the Archbishop apologize to the editor of the magazine?

As Little Green Footballs says:

“It’s not the policy of the Church in Wales to advocate tolerance of all religions, by all religions?

Pitiful.”

Meanwhile Aftenposten reports that the Swedish Foreign Minister, Laila Freivald, has resigned with immediate effect. There appear to be several reasons for this “entirely personal” decision but the most proximate cause was the shutting down of a website that had published those cartoons. It seems Ms Freivald acted unconstitutionally.

Win some, lose some.

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