German Chancellor Merkel honours Mohammad cartoonist at press award
Chancellor Angela Merkel paid tribute to freedom of speech on Wednesday at a ceremony for a Dane whose cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad provoked Muslim protests that led to 50 deaths five years ago.
Merkel, who grew up in Communist East Germany, recalled her joy over the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. “Freedom for me personally is the happiest experience of my life,” Merkel, 56, said at the conference on press freedom in Potsdam near Berlin.
“Even 21 years after the Berlin Wall fell the force of freedom stirs me more than anything else,” she said. She called press freedom a “precious commodity”.
Honoured at the event was Kurt Westergaard, who drew the most controversial of 12 cartoons of Mohammad which angered Muslims worldwide after appearing in a Danish paper in 2005. Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam to be offensive, and Westergaard’s cartoon portrayed Mohammad with a turban resembling a bomb. At least 50 people died in riots by enraged Muslims in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Aiman Mazyek of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany said in a statement: “Merkel is honouring the cartoonist who in our view trampled on our prophet and trampled on all Muslims.”
Support lower for Muslim-backed U.N. text on defamation of religion
The U.N. General Assembly condemned defamation of religion for the fifth year running on Friday but support continued to erode for a resolution Western countries say threatens freedom of speech.
The assembly passed the Islamic-sponsored resolution with 80 votes in favor, 61 against and 42 abstentions. That compared with 86 votes to 53 against with 42 abstentions for a similar text last year and figures of 108-51-25 in 2007, the last time the measure commanded an absolute majority of U.N. members.
The nonbinding resolution has gone through every year since it was prompted in 2005 by a row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared in a Danish newspaper, sparking bloody protests by Muslims around the world. The only religion the resolution specifically names as a target of defamation is Islam.
Angela Wu of the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty said the resolution “provides international cover for domestic blasphemy laws that are overbroad and easy to abuse … The concept of ‘defamation of religions’ undermines the foundations of human rights law by protecting ideas instead of people, and empowering states instead of their citizens.”
Germany asks if Islam impedes on freedom of speech
A decision by the German publisher Droste not to print a murder mystery about an honour killing because it contained passages insulting Islam has raised questions in Germany about religion impeding on freedom of speech.
Droste publishers said they would have published the book, entitled “To Whom Honour is Due”, had author Gabriele Brinkmann softened the tone in some sections In one, for example, an angry character tells another to dispose of a Koran using a crude phrase we would not reproduce here. “The author was not prepared to change the derogatory passages, which would have been a condition for the publication,” Droste said in a statement on its website.
Little did they realise what a stir this decision would cause in Germany, which is sensitive to any compromise on freedom of speech and where security fears over Islamists have blocked several artistic ventures in recent years. “For me, it is about the principle. That is why I went public about this. I won’t hurry to be obedient and carry out self censorship,” Brinkmann told German media. “Justified fear or cowardice?” asked the headline in the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.
Droste insists it is not worried about releasing books dealing with controversial themes, but refuse to publish books which insult peoples’ faith — whether Islam, Christianity or other religions. But Brinkmann points out that her book was a work of fiction, and it was clear that the opinions expressed by fictive characters were neither her own nor those of the publishers.
Furthermore, it is questionable if the company would have similary toned down any insults of Christianity, a religion that is regularly parodied and demonised in popular culture. Why not? Perhaps because insults against Christianity probably wouldn’t have carried the same security risks. Monty Python’s comedy The Life of Brian and Dan Brown’s best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code both provoked outrage among sections of the Christian community, but not death threats or violence.
Publisher Felix Droste himself admitted that he was concerned about a security risk that could arise to the company if it published the book, in light of the riots that broke out in several Islamic countries after cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper sparked outrage among Muslims.
Islam’s greatest strength is its intense paranoia, which is reflected in Gumnaan’s comments.
They’re quite simply scared of thinking about their religion at all, because doing so would show it to be the fraud it was.
Wake up dude. Mohammad was a clever shyster who borrowed bits of Christianity, Judaism and Arabic pantheism to create a virulent religion that would spread like wirefire during a period when there was no larger force to stop it. As soon as the West tried to confront it, it was stopped and driven back — starting with Charles Martell, all the way into the 20th century.
Since then, Muslims have only been able to make progress by the West giving them technology, money and license. They can settle in Europe without assimilating, but are too scared of our freedom to let anyone teach Christianity in their allegedly holy lands.
Islam is like Stalin — utterly paranoid and vicious, concerned with nothing except self-preservation and expansion.
It’s the responsibility of everybody who values freedom to resist this false religion from a false profit, serving a false god.
Who are you Gumnaan, or anyone else in the umma, to say we can’t cricize Mohammed?
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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use this “Freedom” ideology for “holocaust” & “911″ and abot their interogation.. why double standard..wait ofr the time when we becom standard and benchmark of ytthe world , so your treacherous,cunning, twisty long-term, slow poisonous policies,to keep muslims undermined, submisive ,sorry for itslf..tiem never remains the same and yes history repeats itself you are one” we muslims are “One again” INSHALLAH!!