This cartoon business is good for Iranian nuclear rights

[Bong]

The Iranian people are fully behind their country's nuclear rights, and the West is almost invariably against it. The GCC and Jordan have gone on record against it. Syria supports us and Egypt is sitting on the fench, but has made official statements more critical of the Western stance than the Iranian one. The Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani governments have deliberately abstained from commenting on the issue.

It is very clear that in the current political climate, the biggest reservoir of untapped support for Iran in general, and Iranian nuclear rights in particular, lies with the Arab and non-Iranian muslim people. It has been reported that at the last OIC meeting, overtures to israel were on the agenda right before Ahmadinejad made his famous/infamous speech about Europeans being responsible for the Holocaust and therefore indebted to its victims rather than the Palestinian people. Since it was telecast live and expectedly went well with the Arab street, the Saudi organizers raced frantically to erase the overtures to israel section on the official agenda. The New York Times has reported this week that Ahmadinejad has become very popular amongst the common people in many Arab countries. In an interview that a NYT reporter made with a Cairo taxi driver, the latter said that Ahmadinejad voiced the views of the common egyptian people that egyptian statesmen could not or would not state.

The fiery Muslim response to the cartoons has been caused not so much from an inherent tendency towards militancy in Islam, but rather from a preception, rightly or wrongly, among Muslims that they are under the threat of domination by the West. In such a context, it is more likely for a Western confronation with Iran to be interpreted as a confrontation with Islam. To regain their sense of self-esteem in the long-term, Muslims will have to institutionalize reform within their societies, economies, and politics to make themsleves relevant to the modern world. In the short-run however, the demonstration of intese devotion to dogma is more than simply a manifestion of religious indoctrination. To be percieved to be irrationally resolute is infact extremely rational, not least when the suppossedly rational counterpart precieves he has more to lose in the event of full escalation.

As in the game of Chicken where a fiery teenager tears off his steering wheel in a very public manner, to convince his opponent that he infact has left himself no option to retreat, Ahmadinejad has likewise torn off the steering wheel of the IRI regime. While statements from the regal Rafsanjani during the presidental campaign hinted at his eminence preferring the consolidation of his personal legacy and fortune rather than Iranian nuclear rights, after Ahmadinejad dragged the entire establishment into open confrontation with the West, even his eminance changed his tune and concluded that the West had more to lose than Iran in the event of a full escalation. This only happened after Ahmadinejad had already torn off the steering wheel of the Iranian nation as a whole. His eminance did not want to seem unpatriotic at a time when even secularists and liberals where supporting the IRI official line.

Now, Ahmadinejad, with the help of Western newspapers and the Palestinian electorate, is almost succeeding in tearing off the steering wheel of the global Islamic community at large. This steering wheel is heavier and harder to pull out, but the vehicle is also significantly bigger. While he started with a small car, he has almost managed to upgrade to a 10 ton truck before the start of the game. He has significantly loosened the steering wheel in the last few months. Any peace loving Iranian should hope that he manages to fully display the torn off steering wheel to his counterparties before each races towards the other.

 

[Bong]

Nice Reuters interview with Palestinian envoy to U.S.

http://today.reuters.com/tv/videoSt...ryId=6d8a54f13bae2eb1c8286fce53daa7a5ba44640a

 

[AMirza]

The Iranian people are fully behind their country's nuclear rights, and the West is almost invariably against it.

The whole point of what is going on is lost, right there on the first line. The whole fiasco is not about Iran's nuclear rights - it's about removing the Islamic Regime that majority of Iranians despise. A rgime which is responsible for much of the Islamic terror campaign worldwide - and is trying to develop nuclear weapons (not just nuclear technology) to survive.

 

[Bong]

The whole point of what is going on is lost, right there on the first line. The whole fiasco is not about Iran's nuclear rights - it's about removing the Islamic Regime that majority of Iranians despise. A rgime which is responsible for much of the Islamic terror campaign worldwide - and is trying to develop nuclear weapons (not just nuclear technology) to survive.

I dont support the regime on internal policies, but I do not believe that they have been behind "islamic terror campaign worldwide" or that the puch to enrich uranium, a right which all countries under the NPT have, is a equivalent to having an intention to make nuclear weapons.

 

[Bong]

Good article in IHT

How rage built: The cartoon trail to Mecca
By Hassan M. Fattah The New York Times
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2006
BEIRUT As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.

The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed "concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries" as well as over "using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions."

The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran attended.

But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in Denmark to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference - and the role its member governments played in the outrage - was something of a turning point.

After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.

As early as October, Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors and ambassadors lobbied Arab governments.

"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference, when the OIC took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam.

Hanafi said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction - of course they were offended - and then you had regimes taking advantage, saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about."'

The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.

At first, the agitation was limited to Denmark. Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born Dane, acts as the spokesman for the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, an umbrella group formed by 27 Danish Muslim organizations to press the Danish government into action over the cartoons.

Akkari said the group had worked for more than two months in Denmark without eliciting any response.

"We collected 17,000 signatures and delivered them to the office of the prime minister, we saw the minister of culture, we talked to the editor of the Jyllands-Posten, we took many steps within Denmark, but could get no action," Akkari said, referring to the newspaper that published the cartoons.

He added that the prime minister's office did not even respond to the petition.

Frustrated, he said the group had turned to the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark and asked them to speak to the prime minister on their behalf. He dismissed them too, Akkari said. "Then the case moved to a new stage," he recalled. "We decided then that to be heard, it must come from influential people in the Muslim world."

The group put together a 43-page dossier on the case, including the offending cartoons and three more images, considered to be shocking, that had been sent to Danish Muslims who had spoken out against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.

Akkari denied that the three additional offending images had contributed to the violent reaction, saying that the images, received in the mail by Muslims who complained about the cartoons, were included to show the response that Muslims got when they spoke out in Denmark.

In early December, the group's delegation of Danish Muslims flew to Cairo, where they met with the grand mufti, Muhammad Sayid Tantawy, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League.

"After that, there was a certain response," Akkari said, adding that the Egyptian government and the Arab League both summoned the Danish ambassador to Egypt for talks.

Akkari concedes that there were misunderstandings along the way.

In Cairo, for example, the group spoke at a news conference about a proposal from Denmark's far-right Danish People's Party to ban the Koran in Denmark because of some 200 verses that allegedly encourage violence.

Several newspapers then ran articles claiming that Denmark planned to issue a censored version of the Koran. The delegation returned to Denmark, but the dossier continued to make waves in the Middle East.

Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, took the dossier with him to the Mecca meeting, where he showed it around. The Danish group also sent a second delegation to Lebanon to meet religious and political leaders there.

Akkari went on that trip. The delegation met with the grand mufti in Lebanon, Muhammad Rashid Kabbani, and the spiritual head of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims, Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, as well as the patriarch of the Maronite Church, Nasrallah Sfeir.

The group also appeared on Hezbollah's satellite television station, Al Manar TV, which is seen throughout the Arab world. Akkari also made a side trip to Damascus to deliver a copy of the dossier to that country's grand mufti, Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun.

Lebanon's foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, says he agreed to meet in mid-December with Egypt's ambassador to Lebanon, who presented him with a letter from Aboul Gheit urging him to get involved in the issue. Attached to the letter were copies of some of the drawings.

At the end of December, the pace picked up as talk of a boycott became more prominent.

The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, comprising more than 50 states, published on its Web site a statement condemning "the aggressive campaign waged against Islam and its Prophet" by Jyllands-Posten and officials of the organization said member nations should impose a boycott on Denmark until an apology was offered for the drawings.

"We encourage the organization's members to boycott Denmark both economically and politically until Denmark presents an official apology for the drawings that have offended the world's Muslims," said Abdulaziz Othman al-Twaijri, the secretary general of the organization.

Within a few weeks, the Jordanian Parliament condemned the cartoons, as did several other Arab governments.

On Jan. 10, as anti-Danish pressure built, a Norwegian newspaper published the caricatures in an act of solidarity with the Danes, leading many Muslims to believe that a real campaign against them had begun.

On Jan. 26, in a key move, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark and Libya followed suit. Saudi clerics began sounding the call for a boycott, and within a day, most Danish products were pulled off supermarket shelves.

"The Saudis did this because they have to score against Islamic fundamentalists," explained Said, the Cairo political scientist.

The issue of the cartoons came at a critical time in the Muslim world because of its anger over the occupation of Iraq and a sense that Muslims were under siege.

Strong showings in elections by Islamists in Egypt and the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories had given new momentum to Islamic movements in the region, and many economies, especially those in the Gulf, realized their economic power as it pertained to Denmark.

The wave swept up many in the region.

Sheik Muhammed Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.

"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus in Christian countries.

"I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries," he recalled.

Then he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed and he began to feel differently.

"It started to seem that this way of thinking was an insult to us," he said.

"It is fine to say, 'This is our freedom, this is our way of thinking.' But we began to believe that their freedom was something that hurts us."

Last week, Abu Zaid heard about a march being planned on the Danish Consulate in Beirut and he decided to join.

He and 600 others boarded buses for Beirut. Within an hour of arriving, some of the demonstrators - none of his people, he insists - became violent and began attacking the building that housed the embassy.

It was just two days after a similar attack occurred on the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus.

"In the demonstration, I believe 99 percent of the people were good and peaceful, but I could hear people saying, 'We don't want to demonstrate peacefully; we want to burn,"' the sheik said.





Reporting for this article was contributed by Craig S. Smith from Paris, Katherine Zoepf from Beirut, Suha Maayeh from Amman, Abeer Allam from Cairo and Massoud A. Derhally from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.