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Danish police arrest hundreds Protesters set up blazing barricades in central Copenhagen Police in Denmark have arrested some 300 demonstrators in the capital, after a protest against the closure of a youth centre turned violent. About 1,000 protesters in Copenhagen threw cobblestones, bottles and fireworks and erected barricades. Police used tear gas to try to break up the protests, comparing the scene on the streets to that of a "war zone". The protesters are angry about orders for young squatters to leave a building occupied since 1982. Local government sold the centre in 2000 and tension has been building since...

ODENSE, Denmark (Reuters) - Just as Danes were breathing sighs of relief that the wounds caused by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad were healing, they were re-opened with the arrest of seven Muslims accused of plotting bomb attacks. Muslims say the arrests two months ago have set back their efforts to integrate into Danish society and they find themselves again forced to defend their allegiance to their adoptive country. "We have worked in this city for a long time for integration," said Maher El Badawi, a social worker in Odense, the suspects' home town in central Denmark. "But people are...

RIYADH (Reuters) - The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on Monday condemned a new round of Danish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad, saying the values of tolerance were shrinking in Europe. Danish state TV on Friday broadcast amateur video footage showing members of the anti-immigrant Danish Peoples' Party (DPP) at a summer camp in August, drinking, singing and taking part in a competition to draw images mocking the Prophet. "Muslims have noted with concern that the values of tolerance are eroding and there is now shrinking space for others' religious, social and cultural values in the West," said...

" While Danish milk products were dumped in the Middle East, fervent rightwing Americans started buying Bang & Olufsen stereos and Lego. In the first quarter of this year Denmark’s exports to the US soared 17%. The British writer Christopher Hitchens organised a buy-Danish campaign. Among the thousands of emails sent to Rose was one from an American soldier serving in Iraq. “He told me he was sitting in Iraq, watching a game of football and drinking a can of Carlsberg,” Rose said. Rose is not the only person to have prospered from the crisis. Re-elected last year, Mr Rasmussen...

Denmark bore the brunt of Muslim anger over the cartoons Danish exports to Muslim countries have been hit hard by a row over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, officials in Denmark say. A Muslim boycott of Danish goods led to a 15.5% drop in total exports between February and June. Trade to the Middle East fell by half, statistics show. An industry chief said there was little doubt the cartoons row was to blame....

The West once again has been forced to confront the clash of cultures. Muslims worldwide rage and riot over Danish newspaper cartoons that, in their eyes, commit the double sin of depicting Mohammad and satirizing him disrespectfully. Many Muslims consider any illustration of their prophet to be an insult to their religion. Of course, other religions often find their ideas and icons satirized or criticized. Yet rarely do they respond with death threats, riots, arson, and murder. There’s a noteworthy irony in the violent Islamic reaction to the publication of the cartoons. The editors of the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten printed...

The Muslim reaction to three blasphemous cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper was more violent than the American reaction to terrorists flying planes into our buildings and killing 3,000 people. This statement, in itself, is absolutely unbelievable. After 9/11 no embassies were firebombed, no people were kidnapped, no mobs chanting “Death” were formed...just a random report or two of some ignorant redneck somewhere who spray-painted a mosque or threatened a Muslim, and who was quickly dealt with by authorities. Now after a daily drumbeat of suicide bombings, beheadings, riots, death-videos, kidnappings, murders, my belief that Islam is a religion...

Behind the cartoon crisis lies a small country’s fight for its national identity. Denmark is one of Europe’s smallest countries; it has only 5.5 million inhabitants. Until the beginning of this year it was known mainly for dairy products, butter cookies, Legos, and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. However, conservative Europeans had been watching Denmark for some time. Since Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s center-right coalition came to power in 2001, Copenhagen has introduced the most sensible immigration policies in Europe. Today, Denmark is at the center of a controversy over 12 drawings, the infamous Danish cartoons. Syria and...

Photo essay with audio of muslims in China, and their disconnect with the muslim world. Mentioned how the Chinese muslims were silent during the Danish cartoon controversy. "In a corner of China, Islam thrives but remains isolated from the Muslim world." Link: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2006/02/19/weekinreview/20060219_yardley_feature.html

Brouhaha ContextBy John Hammer Despite what Americans have been led to believe by the mainstream media, the protests about the Danish cartoons are about as spontaneous as the canned laughter on an old network sitcom. Imagine for a moment that you are so outraged by the riots in Pakistan that you and 10,000 of your closest friends and family decide to protest. So you go to your flag locker and pull out your Pakistani flag to burn. What? You don’t have a flag locker with flags of every nation in the world? Wow, if one is to believe the tripe...

"When a thinking person sees or reads something that offends them in a newspaper, they write a letter to the editor; they don't torch KFC. Clearly, there is more than a touch of irony in the violent reactions of Muslims around the world as a result of these cartoons."

My parents were born in Denmark — Jutland, to be exact, the peninsula of that tiny kingdom that links Denmark to Germany. The Danish name is Jylland, and Jylland Posten is the newspaper that published the offensive cartoons last September. It’s a national newspaper with its home base in Denmark’s more rural countryside. Having lived in Denmark for a number of years prior to retiring to Sierra Vista, I came to know my heritage fairly well and what to expect in Danish newspapers. I’m exceedingly proud to be an American, but I am equally proud of my Danish background. Yes,...

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - About 5,000 children chanting "Hang those who insulted the prophet" rallied in Pakistan's largest city on Tuesday in the latest protest in the Islamic nation against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The children, ages 8 to 12, burned a coffin draped in U.S., Israeli and Danish flags at a traffic intersection in the port city of Karachi as police in riot gear looked on. The rally was organized by Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest Islamic group. The children, some wearing school uniforms and headbands emblazoned with "God is great," were released from schools to take...

Judith Apter Klinghoffer at the History News Network reports that Nigerian Christians are being macheted by Muslims "outraged at the Danish cartoon nonsense. Gateway Pundit is reporting that 35 persons have been killed, 30 churches burned, and 5 hotels set ablaze. Rantings of a Sandmonkey is reporting injuries, but no deaths yet, in Egypt. In an update, Klinghoffer reports that Nigerian Christians are retaliating: Finally, MSM has the story it has been waiting for, a story about Christians and Muslims killing each other. As I have noted bellow, the Christians have concluded that they can either continue to die or retaliate....

As Rush just noted, one of the large global seaport opertions companies is Mersk (18% of world market), from Denmark. So, let's give our port contracts to the Danish, and stick it to the Mullahs over the cartoons at the same time.

After weeks of protests worldwide sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Cornell students and staff are struggling to understand the controversy's implications. "...there has been a lot of coverage about all the violence in response to these cartoons, and it concerns me," said Aneesa Mitchell '06, president of the Muslim Educational and Cultural Organization (MECA). "I don't think that's the proper reaction according to the teachings we have from Muhammad. The violent reaction is not going to get the response that we want." "It's dismaying if newspapers are frightened [to publish]," he said. Some professors, however, placed the primary...

Question: MSM hypocrisy: showing Abu Ghirab photos (again!) but not Danish cartoons Is sky blue? Classic media double standard No, media just being respectful of Islam You kidding? media afraid of Islam Media goal: embarrass Bush even if it kills soldiers

The uproar over the Danish cartoons satirizing the "Prophet" is a perfect illustration of the futility of public discourse in the postmodern world. In one corner are the pointy-headed leftists - self-hating Westerners who blame the victims (Danes et al.) for permitting such blasphemies to be published. In the other are the ditto-headed "conservatives" who declare that mockery of all things holy is our "tradition," and anyone who doesn’t like it, had better go back to Mullah-land. It does no good to explain to the "conservatives" that mockery and skepticism have been the weapons of Anti-Christianity since Montaigne and...

In the wake of a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Danish flags and embassies are beset by violent protesters in heavily Muslim countries. But a chocolate store in the windmill-filled, Danish American tourist village of Solvang has enjoyed a small spike in its mail-order business. And it’s not just because of Valentine’s Day, though that always helps, said chocolatemaker Bent Pedersen. “One comment was that they were buying in support of Denmark,” said Pedersen, who owns Ingeborg’s World Famous Danish Chocolates, which does a brisk business online from its Copenhagen Drive store. Pedersen said that...

Comments in Middle East border on bizarre... Bill Clinton (in Qatar) called the cartoon depictions of Muhammad published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last fall "totally outrageous cartoons against Islam," ... In fact, the cartoons are pretty tame stuff -- the Islamic prophet is not shown as dirty, drooling, shaped like an animal or engaged in any unsavory acts, all standard for cartoon depictions of Jews in the modern Arab press. Mr. Clinton is entitled to his opinion, of course, though one wonders why he would want to gin up more hostility toward the West with an inflammatory characterization of...