Hey Löw..., err, Shifty. Did ya really expect them to show it? Here's what the "Religion Of Peace" is really all about:
In May 1994, a fatwa on Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin came after she was quoted in The Statesman that "…the Koran should be revised thoroughly." This follows attacks and persecution of Taslima for her 1993 book Lajja (Bangla word for 'shame')
In 1997 Tatiana Soskin was apprehended in Hebron while attempting to attach to an Arab storefront a drawing she'd made depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a pig reading the Koran. The incident created considerable tensions.
In 1998, Ghulam Akbar, a Shi'a Muslim, was convicted, in a Rahimyar Khan court, of uttering derogatory remarks against Muhammad in 1995 and sentenced to death. He was the first to receive such a sentence under Section 295(c) of the Pakistani penal code. [6]
In August 2000, a Lahore court sentenced Abdul Hasnain Muhammad Yusuf Ali to death and 35 years' imprisonment for "defiling the name of Muhammad" under Section 295(a), 295(c), and 298.[7]
In 2001, prior to 9/11, American magazine Time printed an illustration of Muhammad along with the Archangel Gabriel waiting for a message from God. The magazine apologized for printing the illustration after widespread protests in Kashmir.[8]
In June 2002, Iranian academic Hashem Aghajari gave a speech that challenged Muslims to refrain from blindly following their clergy. His speech provoked international outcry, and, in November 2002, he was sentenced to death for "blasphemy against Muhammad." [9]
In November 2002, an article in the Nigerian ThisDay newspaper prior to the upcoming Miss World pageant, suggesting Muhammad would have chosen one of the contestants as his bride, sparked riots that eventually claimed over 200 lives.[10]
In December 2002, Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Marlette published a drawing that showed Muhammad driving a Ryder truck, with a nuclear rocket attached. He received more than 4,500 e-mails from angry Muslims, some with threats of death and mutilation.[11]
In 2004, Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali created the 10-minute movie Submission. The film is about violence against women in Islamic societies. It shows four abused naked women, wearing see-through dresses. Qur'anic verses allegedly unfavourable to women in Arabic are painted on their bodies. After the movie was released, both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats. Van Gogh was stabbed and shot dead on November 2, 2004, in Amsterdam by Mohammed Bouyeri. A note he left impaled on Van Gogh's chest threatened Western governments, Jews and Hirsi Ali (who went into hiding).
In February 2005 the "Världskulturmuséet" ("Museum of World Culture") in Göteborg, Sweden decided to remove the painting "Scène d’Amour" by Louzla Darabi. The painting was part of a temporary exhibition about HIV/AIDS, and depicted a man and a woman having sexual intercourse. The artist and the curator had received numerous death threats from Muslims enraged over the Koran quotations which were featured in a corner of the painting. Some threats were telling the artist to "learn from the Netherlands", referring to the murder of van Gogh and threats against Hirsi Ali.[4] (News article in Swedish)
On April 19, 2005 the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet broke the news that celebrity preacher Runar Søgaard in a causerie had called the prophet Mohammed "a confused paedophile" (alluding to Mohammed's revelations and his marriages with young girls such as Aisha). Søgaard had at the same time also told jokes about Jesus and Buddha. Søgaard received numerous death threats from Muslims and went on national television to apologise for his jokes. His apologies did not help, and Muslim extremists in Sweden contacted imams around the world in order to have a fatwa issued against Søgaard. Among the contacted ones were Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A fatwah with a death sentence against Søgaard was eventually issued by an African imam.[5][6]
In September 2005 the Tate Britain gallery decided not to display a work by John Latham entitled God Is Great #2, made ten years previously, which consisted in part of a Koran, a Bible and a Talmud that had been disassembled. The exhibition was close to the time of the July 7 2005 London bombings which influenced the Tate's decision. [12][13]
In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed twelve cartoons of Muhammad, including one that portrayed him wearing a bomb under his turban. The cartoons angered Muslims around the world and, when several other newspapers reprinted the cartoons and an Islamic committee from Denmark had toured several Islamic countries with the real and some falsified material, led to death threats, riots, and burning of embassies in some countries in January 2006 and February 2006. A Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, was shot to death in Turkey on February 5. A 16 year-old student was arrested for the murder and admitted it, saying he had been "enraged by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in the European press". It was unclear whether Turkish police saw this as the real motive for the killing.[7]
References:
[5]^ Koenraad Elst. The Rushdie Rules. work. URL accessed on 2006-02-03.
[6]^ Annual Report on International Religious Freedom 2004, November 2004, 108-2 Joint Committee Print, S. Prt. 108-59. Published 2005, page 666.
[7]^ Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 1980, Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O. Page 2508.
[8]^ “Time Magazine undskyldte Muhammed-tegning i 2001,” Politiken, 2006-02-03.
[9]^ Annual Report, International Religious Freedom, 2000, U.S. G.P.O., Supt. of Docs. Page 502.
[10]^ “Nigeria violence rages on,” BBC News, 2002-11-23.
[11]^ Moore, Art: “What would Muhammad drive?”, WorldNetDaily, 2002-12-28.
[12]^ “Tate 'misunderstood' banned work,” BBC News, 2005-09-26.
[13]^ Tate press release. URL accessed on 2006-02-03.
