One of the men who took the dodgy dossier to the Middle East in order to whip up outrage over the Muhammed cartoons has expressed regret. Sort of.

In an interview with Bob Simon for CBS’ 60 Minutes, Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban described the deaths that followed his trip as “unexpected tragedies, and we have to live with them.”

“I feel sorry [for the deaths]. Religion – for Muslims, Christians and Jews – is to provide the human beings … the best opportunity to practice life, to live, not to die.”

He then goes on to excuse himself by saying

“But we make cars and we make accidents. We build skyscrapers, but they collapse in an earthquake. This is life.”

And then expresses satisfaction

“The whole world is engaged. I’m so positive.”

Abu Laban was one of a group of Danish imams that took a 43 page dossier to the Arab world with the intention of stiring up a reaction. The dossier contained not only the cartoons that had been published in the Jyllands Posten, but also three more deliberately offensive cartoons - depicting Muhammed as a paedophile demon, with the snout of a pig (which has since been identified and revealed to have nothing to do with either Denmark or Muhammed), and being sodomised by a dog - that had never been seen before.

Abu-Laban claims his material clearly made the distinction between published and not published, but he could not show that distinction to Simon in his own copy of the dossier.

Was his intent to stir up passions? “We didn’t give it to the media. Don’t forget this point,” says Abu-Laban. To which Simon replies, “I am the media and I have it.”

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