The GOD Delusion Read Online Free PDF Page B

nurtured throughout the Islamic world by a small group
of Muslims living in Denmark, led by two imams who had been granted
sanctuary there. 12 In late 2005 these malevolent
exiles travelled from Denmark to Egypt bearing a dossier, which was
copied and circulated from there to the whole Islamic world, including,
importantly, Indonesia. The dossier contained falsehoods about alleged
maltreatment of Muslims in Denmark, and the tendentious lie that Jyllands-Posten was a government-run newspaper. It also contained the twelve
cartoons which, crucially, the imams had supplemented with three
additional images whose origin was mysterious but which certainly had
no connection with Denmark. Unlike the original twelve, these three
add-ons were genuinely offensive - or would have been if they had, as
the zealous propagandists alleged, depicted Muhammad. A particularly
damaging one of these three was not a cartoon at all but a faxed
photograph of a bearded man wearing a fake pig's snout held on with
elastic. It has subsequently turned out that this was an Associated
Press photograph of a Frenchman entered for a pig-squealing contest at
a country fair in France. 13 The photograph had
no connection whatsoever with the prophet Muhammad, no connection with
Islam, and no connection with Denmark. But the Muslim activists, on
their mischief-stirring hike to Cairo, implied all three connections .
. . with predictable results.
    The
carefully cultivated 'hurt' and 'offence' was brought to an explosive
head five months after the twelve cartoons were originally published.
Demonstrators in Pakistan and Indonesia burned Danish flags (where did
they get them from?) and hysterical demands
were made for the Danish government to apologize. (Apologize for what?
They didn't draw the cartoons, or publish them. Danes just live in a
country with a free press, something that people in many Islamic
countries might have a hard time understanding.) Newspapers in Norway,
Germany, France and even the United States (but, conspicuously, not
Britain) reprinted the cartoons in gestures of solidarity with Jyllands-Posten, which added fuel to the flames. Embassies and consulates were
trashed, Danish goods were boycotted, Danish citizens and, indeed,
Westerners generally, were physically threatened; Christian churches in
Pakistan, with no Danish or European connections at all, were burned.
Nine people were killed when Libyan rioters attacked and burned the
Italian consulate in Benghazi. As Germaine Greer wrote, what these
people really love and do best is pandemonium. 14
    A
bounty of $1 million was placed on the head of 'the Danish cartoonist'
by a Pakistani imam - who was apparently unaware that there were twelve
different Danish cartoonists, and almost certainly unaware that the
three most offensive pictures had never appeared in Denmark at all
(and, by the way, where was that million going to come from?). In
Nigeria, Muslim protesters against the Danish cartoons burned down
several Christian churches, and used machetes to attack and kill (black
Nigerian) Christians in the streets. One Christian was put inside a
rubber tyre, doused with petrol and set alight. Demonstrators were
photographed in Britain bearing banners saying 'Slay those who insult
Islam', 'Butcher those who mock Islam', 'Europe you will pay:
Demolition is on its way' and, apparently without irony, 'Behead those
who say Islam is a violent religion'.
    In
the aftermath of all this, the journalist Andrew Mueller interviewed
Britain's leading 'moderate' Muslim, Sir Iqbal Sacranie. 15 Moderate
he may be by today's Islamic standards, but in Andrew Mueller's account
he still stands by the remark he made when Salman Rushdie was condemned
to death for writing a novel: 'Death is perhaps too easy for him' - a
remark that sets him in ignominious contrast to his courageous
predecessor as Britain's most influential Muslim, the late Dr Zaki
Badawi, who offered Salman Rushdie sanctuary, in his own home. Sacranie
told Mueller