“Yawn…” - they’re protesting. Again
Iran and Pakistan are currently bitching and moaning about the cartoons that appeared in a Swedish paper that make Mohammed look like the dog he is.
Iran summoned a Swedish diplomat to its foreign ministry on Monday to protest against a cartoon in a Swedish newspaper depicting the head of Prophet Muhammad on a dog’s body, Sweden’s foreign ministry said.
“Gunilla von Bahr, Sweden’s charge d’affaires, was summoned to the Iranian foreign ministry today where she received a protest from the Iranian government,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Anna Björkander told AFP.
The Iranian government told Von Bahr the cartoon was “offensive to Prophet Muhammad,” Björkander said, refusing to disclose any further details of the meeting.
The cartoon was drawn by Swedish artist Lars Vilks, whose series of drawings of the prophet as a dog have sparked a controversy in Sweden. Several art galleries refused to display the sketches amid fears of angry reactions from Muslims.
The Orebro local newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published one of the drawings on August 18 to illustrate an editorial on self-censorship and freedom of religion.
So far, Sweden and the newspaper are standing firm. We’ll see.
Nerikes Allehanda editor-in-chief Ulf Johansson met with Lamhamdi but refused to apologize for the cartoon, which was part of an Aug. 19 editorial criticizing several Swedish art galleries for refusing to display a series of prophet drawings by Vilks.
“They say they are offended and I regret that, because our purpose was not to offend anyone,” Johansson told The Associated Press. “But they are asking for an apology and a promise that I never again publish a similar image … and that I cannot do.”
Naturally, if you cover the Virgin Mary in a burqa and stick a towel on the head of Jesus, that’s no problem for Islam as Neptunus Lex points out:
Thousands of angry Christians poured into their businesses Thursday morning, as word leaked out about an Australian art show featuring a holographic image of Jesus morphing into Osama bin Laden. Hundreds of people went uninjured and no one was killed, while shops throughout the Christian world opened their doors, citing a lack of security concerns. Hundreds of Australian flags went untorched while Australian beer was poured into glasses in pubs on the eerily quiet streets of Christendom.
Ah yes, all those Christian riots… I remember the last one was about, uhhhh, well….
Actually, I don’t recall any Christian riots. And in Austrailia, where burqa Mary and Osama Jesus are depicted as art, there didn’t seem to be any reported threats of death to non-Christians because of it.
Funny, that.
Then again, it just makes me sleepy to hear about “another” insult to Islam.
**yawn**
