Five years after he drew some cartoons that included the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban, and that ignited a worldwide Muslim firestorm, Kurt Westergaard was attacked in his Denmark home by an angry Muslim, Associated Press reported.
Police foiled the attempt to kill the artist, according to the report.
The country’s intelligence service head said the 28-year-old Somali man was armed with an ax and a knife when he tried breaking in to the 75-year-old Westergaard’s home Friday night.
Police shot the man in a knee and a hand, authorities said.
Westergaard’s 5-year-old grandson was spending the night when the maniac was discovered and the cartoonist called police and sought shelter in his home’s specially made safe room, according to the report.
Police arrived two minutes later and tried to arrest the assailant, who wielded an axe at a police officer, who then shot the man, AP reports.
It’s a shame the man needs a specially made safe room, but obviously, the contract is still out on the artist over his 2005 cartoons.
The story points out that Islamic law prohibits any depiction of the prophet, even favorable ones, for fear it could lead to idolatry.
My question here is who’s eternal soul are they concerned about?
The problem as I see it, is that Islamic law applies only to Muslims – as Jewish law applies to Jews and religious Christian law applies to religious Christians. And I will stick my neck out here and guess that Westergaard is not a Muslim.
Religious fundamentalists of all stripes tend to believe that the rules by which their particular sect lives are best for everyone, and that the world would be a better place if everyone obeyed them. Most of them likely believe God wants everyone to follow them and they may even believe God will punish those who don’t.
But, with the exception of the Islamo-fascists, few others take it upon themselves to force the issue.
So, let’s look at the cartoon controversy.
Muslims, they tell us, are not allowed to depict Mohammed, and, in this case, no Muslim did. Therefore, no Muslim is in danger of becoming an idol worshiper over having created the image. If some non-Muslim is in danger of falling into idol worship because of these cartoons, isn’t that the non-Muslim’s problem?
And here is where we begin to see why the West and Islam will never be able to peacefully coexist.
The Islamists obviously believe their law applies to everyone – that a Muslim laying eyes on an image of the prophet created by someone else is problematic. Same with women wearing something other than those body-enveloping tents. The Islamists believe that a Western woman in Western dress, even in a Western country, is an affront to Muslim law, and therefore, to Islam generally. And the “Muslim street,” as it were, is loath to tolerate anything they perceive as disrespect, often responding with random violence.
So, Houston, we have a problem.
Radical Muslims are still – five years later – trying to kill this Danish cartoonist. How long was Salman Rushdie living under the cloud of a world-wide fatwa? Twenty years? And let’s not forget the fate of Dutch flimmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed in the street over his role in a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women.
I don’t know about you, but I have a terrible time telling the difference in appearance alone, between the radical and the non-radical variety of Muslim.
So, we, as freedom-loving Western people, need to decide if our way of life is important enough to us to cross the line into political incorrectness to preserve. Otherwise we are all living under a worldwide fatwa, forced to look over our shoulders all the time, wondering which normal-looking person may be planning to blow himself up and us with him.
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