GagWatch

One of the most rewarding parts of running a blog such as this is when, after months of obsessively hammering on and on about some issue, the mainstream press finally catches up. It would be nice if they did a bit of fact checking, but you can’t have everything, I suppose.

In December, a group of Danish Muslims travelled to a meeting of Muslim leaders in Mecca with a 43 page document that included not only the Jyllands Posten cartoons but an additional three, deliberately abusive, cartoons which had never been published - or seen before - and which they claimed had been sent to individual Muslims, although they have been so far unable to say who received them.

According to The Independent, they have changed their story slightly and are now claiming that these extra pictures had been faxed to Muslim groups, although this still leaves open the question of why the alleged recipients of these cartoons didn’t see fit to pass the fax numbers on to any of the Danish authorities. It also, of course, leaves them having to explain this.

The meeting in Islam’s holiest city appears to have been a catalyst for turning local anger at the images into a matter of public, and often violent, protest in Muslim nations. It also persuaded countries such as Syria and Iran to give media exposure to the cartoon controversy in their state-controlled press.

Muhammed El Sayed Said, the deputy director of the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, an independent studies centre, said the Mecca meeting was a turning point in internationalising the cartoons issue. “Things started to get really bad once the Islamic conference picked it up,” he said. “Iran and Syria contributed to fomenting reaction. It came to the point where everyone had to score a point to be seen as championing the cause of Islam.”

According to Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, the cartoons had provided Arab governments under pressure from the West for democratic reforms with an opportunity to hit back in the public opinion stakes.

“[Demonstrations] started as a visceral reaction - of course they were offended - and then you had regimes taking advantage saying, ‘Look this is the democracy they’re talking about’,” he told The New York Times.

The Danish radicals stayed in the Arab world for a month and are now trying to duck any responsibility for their actions. According to Ahmed Abu Laban, a radical cleric and leading critic of the cartoons in Denmark:

“We are not professional enough to know what would be the response of media, nor the interest of politicians there.”

Wikipedia now has a the full 43 pager dossier online. With translations. (via Blogerheads)

I’ve posted a timeline of events once before but it is worth repeating, so here it is again…

Muhammed Cartoons Controversy - the timeline

• Septeber 17, 2005: Danish newspaper Politiken reports a writer failed to find an artist for a book about Mohamed because of fear of reprisals. Seeing this as a censorship issue, Jyllands Posten called for images of the prophet
• September 30 2005: Jyllands Posten published the 12 pictures they received to illustrate an article about censorship. They immediately receive death threats
• October 27, 2005: Danish Muslim groups file a criminal complaint against Jyllands-Posten
• December 6, 2005: Danish Muslim leaders and imams travel to Mecca to stir up a reaction among Muslim Leaders
• January 7, 2005: Prosecutors decide there is no case to answer against Jyllands-Posten
• January 10, 2006: Norwegian magazine, Magazinet, reprints the cartoons to show solidarity with Jyllands Posten
• January 12, 2006: Danish Muslim leaders and imams start hawking their fraudulent dossier around the islamic world to “explain” how offensive the cartoons are. The 43 page document they took with them contained an additional three, deliberately offensive, cartoons that hadn’t been seen before
• January 17, 2006: After receiving death threats, Magazinet withdraws the cartoons from its website.
• January 25, 2006: Saudi Arabia’s top cleric calls on Denmark to punish the Jyllands-Posten over the cartoons.
• January 26, 2006: Saudi Arabia recalls its ambassador
• January 29, 2006: Libya closes its embassy in Denmark and threatens to take “economic measures.”
• January 30, 2006: Gunmen storm EU’s Gaza office demanding apology. After a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, Austrian foreign minister Ursula Plassnik says that the EU “strongly rejects” these threats and EU trade comissioner, Peter Mandelson warns that “Any boycott of Danish goods would be seen as a boycott of European goods.”
• January 31, 2006: Jyllands Posten expresses regret for offending Muslim sensibilities
• February 1, 2006: Papers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain reprint the cartoons
• February 2, 2006: Papers in Switzerland, Gemany and Spain reprint the cartoons
• February 3, 2006: Belgian papers reprint the cartoons.
• February 4, 2006: Syrians set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. In the UK, Muslim radicals call for those who “insult Islam” to be killed. Moderates start to make a stand.
• February 5, 2006: Protesters set fire to the Danish embassy in Beirut
• February 6, 2006: EU procrastinates
• February 7, 2006: More death threats received by papers that published the cartoons
• February 8, 2006: Protestors start hacking western websites
• 10 February, 2006 The editor of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper which first published the cartoons, is sent on leave for an indefinite period, as the editor of a Norwegian magazine that reprinted them apologises

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