MWL Condemns Norwegian Magazine for Publishing Offending Cartoons
MINA, 12 January 2006 — The Muslim World League yesterday expressed its resentment over the cartoons published by a Norwegian magazine offensive to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
“The cartoons published in the magazine’s Tuesday issue are offensive to the Prophet and they deliberately chose Eid day to launch a sinister campaign,” WML Secretary-General Dr. Abdullah Al-Turki said in a statement.
He warned of the negative consequences that might follow.
“This will not affect international relations but give rise to hatred in the Muslim world for such countries,” he said and reminded the consequences that followed when a Danish newspaper published 12 offending cartoons some years ago.
“Such incidents anger over 1.5 billion Muslims who want to live in peace and harmony the world over,” he said and urged cultural and social institutions across Europe to halt the hate campaign against Islam forthwith.
When I first read this I pretty much waved it off as being the usual Muslim combination intolerance and sensitivity to insult: apparently the crime is worse when it occurs on Eid day. Eid day? sorry mate but I have no idea when Eid day is - apparently though it is the January 10th though - or what it is and I'll bet that the average Norwegian has a similar view. I am sort of aware that the Hajj pilgrimage is going on (only 300 dead so far this year out of 2 million pilgrims) and I guess that Eid day is something to do with this but I afraid that that pretty much exhausts my knowledge and interest.
But then I noticed a couple of minor oddities. the first is the name of the organization, is it the Muslim World League or the World Muslim League? I understand that this is possibly nit-picking but the initials are MWL in one place and WML (which I thought stood for WAP Markup Language) somewhere else. The second is the amount of time that has apparently passed in Arabia since September 2005 when the 12 cartoons where published. By my calculations four months (plus or minus a few days) have passed since the cartoons were published, but in Arabia they were published "some years ago". Given the great Islamic contributions to scholarship (algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol etc.) you would have thought that the journalists could actually count up to ONE.
PS I can't help note that the Arab News is strangely silent about the number of deaths at the Hajj. I'm sure it's just that they are terribly busy and haven't had time to update the home page....