What we are seeing is Sharia by stealth.

The Australian dares not show the cartoons, and Ruddock makes appeasing comments.

Irfan

Yet another thoughtful and rational contribution. I have seen most of the cartoons, and only one of them was even good enough to cause me to crack a grin - the rest are simply poorly conceived and in some cases poorly drawn too. Clearly they have been seized upon by those looking for excuses for violence and secular political advantage, just as the then Pope used the (literally) mad Al-Hakim's act to trigger the Crusades.

I have no religious beliefs: to me they are all the same (invalid). But the freedom I have to be a non-believer is the same freedom others have to believe. I would not gratuitously offend someone's religious susceptibilities by eg, desecrating a mosque, church or synagogue. But nor will I accept someone trying to impose their religious standards on me or mine - example from a different context: Tony Abbott trying to impose his Catholic beliefs on the community by abusing his ministerial power over the RU-46 drug.

Irfan, you are a voice of reason and tolerance. We need more like you.

Ifran. I see the xenophobic right wing revolutionary wafflers, are at it again.My God it's not enough to be bombing the be-jesus out of them,moaning about the way they dress,their hygene habits,blaming them for just about every thing except the bubonic plague.(Although I can be sure someone on this forum will enlighten us)now we feel we have a free go to insult their deity.And of course now they are getting a little miffed about it,over the top in some cases I must confess.However, just a cursory glance over some of the postings here some would like to have them exterminated from the planet.

Now for mine,I find it some what strange that the offending cartoons came out of a Nordic country,of course apart from the time they sailed in their long ships to rape and pillage Europe. They are now traditionally regarded as a non agressive,progressive,forward thinking democracy.(and their attitude to sex beutifuuuulllll).And unless someone informs me to the contrary,they have a good relationship with their own Moslems and Islam in general.

Now I aint no conspiricy theorist,but what better place to release a little bit of propaganda,to get just the intended result.Because New York or London first off the rank so to speak just wouldn't have had the same re-action.It is well known the west is split on the war on terror,the way it is prosecuted,and the final outcome.What better way to get all the dissenters on board,for the showdown that is coming to a theatre near you very soon

PHILB,

I agree with your comments about the fact that this looks like it has been set-up. Like the dirt-poor young people from the US used as cannon fodder in the army for the oile barons people without power, the majority- in country's like Saudi, Kuwaut, Egypt ec. are easily whipped into anger; they have justifiable anger at the west to begin with. It would be no surprise should the oil barons in the US and the rulers in these countries, along with Israel, be orchestrating ferment behind the scenes. I suspect the world is just like a chess board for these "leaders"; countries are moved around and altered like pawns in their game....we need good, and brave,journalists follow what is happening. The Canadian journalist, Paul Roberts is good...but he does not get any publicity and I expectr many have not heard of him.

I have never been able to deduce if Irfan is the sort of liberal minded Muslim that his faith so desperately needs. Or, if he is a very clever promoter of traditional Islam who knows the power of Public Relations, and who knows which emotional buttons to push that will appeal to Islam’s most ardent defenders in the West. Personally, I think that it is the latter.

Irfan knows that he has a real problem this time. Because those who most support the Islamic colonization in their own Western countries regard “freedom of expression” as their most revered sacred cow. To people like Sneakypeter, Muslims can plant bombs in airliners, behead journalists, knock down tall buildings, blow up marketplaces, and gang rape Aussie girls all they please, but when they start attacking what he and his friends most hold dear, then Sneakypeter and co. must be feeling like Christian Scientists with appendicitis.

The trendy lefties are now in a real quandary. Traditionally, the artistic class has always been the opponent of any traditional values, and they can be relied upon to go into bat for any cause which attacks the society in which they live. Their support for Islamic colonization is just another way for them to get up the noses of their own society, a society which they despise.

But now the Muslim people that they have championed are biting their hands by attacking a principle which the trendies emphatically proclaim is sacrosanct. What we have now, ladies and gentleman, is a very serious ideological split between Islam and it’s western defenders.

It is interesting to speculate on what will happen next. This could, (as Irfan probably fears) begin the process of opposition to Islam by the West’s most noisy and politically committed minority. Such a process has already begun in European countries, where the fundamental differences between Islam and the sacred beliefs of Europe's own intellectual elite has become apparent.

Irfan’s best bet, is therefore to be attack his own Muslim faith’s violent defenders in backward Islamic societies, in order to placate Islam’s dimwitted allies in the west.

Look, Christ's Sermon on the Mount makes it clear who holds God's favour in the struggle between the Danes and the Jihadists:

'Blessed are the cheese-makers'..