The following is an abbreviated translation from some of the Arabic-language blogsphere. The selected posts reflect different deviations in opinions and reactions related to the infamous Danish Cartoons.
Dalya Younis of Geraldine Kingdom blog writes:
Ahmed a Syrian-hardliner blogger writes:
أنا مدرك أنه ينبغي علينا التعامل بطرق سلمية بعيدة عن هتك الأرواح ، أو التهديد بهتكها ،، و قد فعلنا ، لكنني لا أفهم هذا الاصرار الوقح و البغيض من الحكومات التي بدأت بالاعتداء عندما احتضنت هذه القذارات تحت مسميات مجملة ، لذلك فيجب أن يفهموا لماذا نحرق سفاراتهم .. و لماذا نريد القصاص منهم .. و لماذا سوف نلجأ إلى خيارات غير سلمية في بعض الأحيان .. ينبغي أن يفهموا أن السبب هو هذا التجاهل و الذي لن نرضى به ، حتى لو وضع السيف في أعناقنا ، و حتى لو اضطررنا إلى نحرق الدنمرك و النرويج و من فيها !!
I understand that we should deal with the matter in more peaceful manners and avoid any human casualties, or threatening lives, and we did that, but I can't understand the ugly and impudent reactions of the governments which started the attack by accommodating this rubbish under different names, therefore, they should understand why we burned their embassies and why we want to revenge… and why we will use violence sometimes.. they should understand that the reason is their ignorance, which we do not accept, even if a sword is held on our necks, and even if we have to burn whole of Denmark and Norway and all what's on them!!
Raed Al Saeed from Saudi Arabia links to the live survey of MSNBC, which at the time of writing this post had 241612 responses to the question: “Are Muslims justified in staging worldwide protests over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad?”
57% said Yes, 41% said No, and 2% said I don't know.
Raed then writes, Shame on you Damascus and Beirut:
كانوا يبحثون عن أمثالكم لقلب انتصارنا لهزيمة ولدعم الدول والمنظمات الغير إسلامية لاعتراضنا لينقلبوا ضدنا!
بعملكم هذا دعمتم رسومهم يا من تحبون الحروب والدمار!
ماذا تركتم للقاعدة بعملكم هذا؟
يا من أشعلتوا النار في السفارات وشوهتوا الإسلام أنتم لا تمثلوننا ولا تمثلون الإسلام!
ولا تحملوا علم السعودية في مظاهراتكم
They were looking for people like you to turn our peaceful victory to a defeat, and to lose the support of the non-Muslim countries and organization who supported us!
What you have done is nothing but support to the depicting cartoons; you warmongers!
You, who ignited the fires and burned the embassies, you do not represent us, and you do not represent Islaam.
And don't carry the Saudi Arabia flag in your protest.
Zayed Al Saidi from Oman asks:
هل حقق العالم الاسلامي الأمن الغذائي ؟
هل نتسطيع أن نستغني عن الغرب؟
لماذا لا يستثمر العرب و المسلمين أموالهم في أوطانهم ؟
هل بالفعل يمكن أن تقوم دولة اسلامية ؟
Did the Islamic World reach to acceptable food security level?
Can we live sufficiently without the West?
Why Arab and Muslims do not invest their wealth at home?
Is it really possible to have an Islamic State?
Humiliation is the title of the bi-monthly Arabic Bloggers Magazine published by the Arabisk Blog! The PDF (Arabic) file is here.
Mohammed Alameen from Somalia writes:
Finally, Eve from Lebanon says:
Note:
None of the above mentioned blogs or bloggers represent by any means, the country that they belong to or blog from. Each is a personal opinion, and does not necessarily talk on behalf of anyone but themselves.
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Marwa Rakha142 posts 
Syafique Shuib3 posts 
Claire Ulrich4 posts 
Faisal Kapadia7 posts 
Julián Ortega Martínez12 posts 
Chhunny Chhean16 posts 
Marietta Le12 posts 
John Liebhardt70 posts 
Ndesanjo Macha2432 posts 
Juhie Bhatia35 posts 
Milton Ramirez51 posts 
Roger Franchini2 posts
In today’s online Houston Chronicle, see [http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3638247.html] “Hundreds of Muslims march to honor a martyr”, a Mr. Raza Zaidi, vice-chairman of the Anjuman Pasban-e-Aza, which organized the event, sait it was their duty to protest the caricatures peacefully. He called the caricatures “shameful” and added that “we think everybody should be respected.” “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you can disrespect other people’s beliefs,” Zaidi said.
Actually, freedom of speech, at least in the US, does mean you can disrespect others beliefs. Freedom of speech is not the freedom to say only what a particular group “approves”, but rather it is the belief built into our vary core beliefs that while I may not like (or even detest) what you say, I will defend your right to say it. Welcome to America.
Good article, I especially liked the poll. To the “Welcome to America.” comment — all of this has occured in Western Europe. So your or ‘our’ standard of freedom isn’t necessarily there’s. However (and I’m probably typical in a bad way), anyone has the right to criticize other things, including others beliefs, even in ways that may be base. Reacting in an equally absurd fashion does not absolve you of your actions, it only reenforces the negative stereotypes many of us continue to hold on this side of the hemisphere.
I would love to share an ‘arabian coffee’ and discuss about islam, religion and humanism. Beyond all this the real problem is a lack of understanding.
Hi there
Most of the Muslims in the world are living in the dark corner of Islam. But I have seen lots of moderat and progessiv Muslims, REAL Muslims who have seen this as a wakeup call and that Islam need to reform itself.
And I fell sorry for everybody living in free countries and all peacefull Muslims, but what we now have to watch is radical “Muslims” desperat attempt to stop Islam reform itself to a secular religion.
And becouse I’m Danish, I would like to clarify things a bit.
In Denmark we have a long tradition for satirical drawings. Since religion in Denmark is regarded fairly much as a private matter, we often make fun of religious icons. At one point a Danish artist depicted Jesus on the cross with an erect penis. Imagine what would happen if someone did something similar to a Muslim icon like Mohammad!
In this case, the drawings of Mohammad was published with the intent of starting a debate on self censorship and freedom of speech, when the issue is related to Islam and Muslims. A relevant debate, I think…it shows!
Now, Jyllands Posten – the newspaper that published the drawings – is indeed a right-wing liberal newspaper. However the term “right-wing” here in Denmark is perhaps not what you’d expect from ex. an American point of view. Right-wing here in Dk. is basically just conservative.
A delegation of local Muslim leaders, with the Danish Muslim leader Abu-Laban (he’s banned in Egypt, because they regard him as a terrorist, btw) in front then visited a bunch of countries in the Muslim world, to speak their case.
They brought with them the 12 drawings plus a bunch of other drawings and photos, wich noone really know how they came about, since they we’re certainly not printed in any Danish newspaper.
It seems to me, that this hole case now basically is living a life of it’s own, that not really is about these 12 drawings, so much as it is a case of Islamic cultures and traditions clashing.
What puzzles me, however, is the fact that Denmark for the past 25 years has been one of the main contributors in the efforts of creating a sovereign state of Palestine.
The Danish government has helped financially, politically and in all sorts of other ways. We have granted asylum to a massive amount of palestinians, and even tjetjen muslim rebels (to the clearly expressed dissatisfaction of the Russians).
So It´s not Denmark or the Danish who having a problem and we WIIL pay the price for our freedom and we WILL share it with all, also real (peacefull) Muslims.
God´s peace
This violence is a great disservice to Muslims and the world at large. They cannot, nor will I ever accept, the imposition of their religious zealotry onto societies with established traditions of free expression, regardless of whether it’s anti-religious or not. I resent the fact that some Muslims are trying to force the world to accept their zealotry. I equally resent the Christians and Jewish zealots that continually assualt our established liberal traditions and impose them onto the rest of us. All zealots, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, need to respect the beliefs of the other human beings who inhabit this planet along-side them, whether they find liberal traditions offensive or not.
My brother keeps telling me that Islam isn’t just a bunch of thugs who want to make us all dhimmi slaves, and insists that he knows many really nice Muslims, but on seeing the response to a Danish cartoon depicting how much of the world sees Islam, it seems to me that the real problem with the cartoon is that it is accurate. What the reaction to this cartoon says to many westerners is that Islam is a religion of peace the same way that the old “Pax Romana” (Roman peace) was: peace at the end of a sword (or gun, or bomb), peace by tyranny, peace by slaying all contrary voices. If Muslims really want to convince Westerners otherwise, instead of offering useless “no, no, that isn’t really us” comments, why don’t they do something about it? Is the “no, we’re really peaceful people” commentary merely smokescreen for global jihad? This isn’t rhetoric; we honestly don’t know.
Hello,
I think that every now and again individual rights need to be tested and shown just how important and relevant they are. Clearly the right to free speech is directly in the crosshairs here, not only for the Denmark but the rest of the world. Will individuals, businesses, and governments globally bow to these political demonstrations and violence? Of course not…Though it speaks volumes of how oppressive and intolerant some of these radical Muslims, and in some cases, governments can be.
The irony of all this is that the cartoon was created (As Claus pointed out) to spark debate on Muslim countries freedom of speech (or lack there of). It seems clear that at least some Muslims don’t want debate, only compliance…