Violence Spreads to Nigeria

What do the Christians in Nigeria have to do with cartoons published in a little Danish newspaper?

NOTHING!

That's irrelevant to the militant Muslims. They want to kill and destroy the "infidels," and they are doing exactly that.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria -- Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.

It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa's most populous nation. An Associated Press reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze.

...And in what has become a daily event, tens of thousands of Muslims protested — this time in Britain, Pakistan and Austria — to denounce the perceived insult.

But it was in Nigeria, where mutual suspicions between Christians and Muslims have led to thousands of deaths in recent years, that tensions boiled over into sectarian violence.

Thousands of rioters burned 15 churches in Maiduguri in a three-hour rampage before troops and police reinforcements restored order, Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said. Iwendi said security forces arrested dozens of people in the city about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital, Lagos.

Chima Ezeoke, a Christian Maiduguri resident, said protesters attacked and looted shops owned by minority Christians, most of them with origins in the country's south.

"Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters," Ezeoke said. Witnesses said three children and a priest were among those killed.

Fifteen churches were burned and at least fifteen people were killed, including children.

Why did these vicious militant Muslim mobs attack these people? Because they are Christians.

With each church or embassy burned, with each innocent murdered, it becomes more difficult to consider Islam a peaceful religion.

Twelve cartoons appear in a Danish publication, and radical Muslims decide that gives them license to destroy property, kill, and put a $1 million bounty on the cartoonist's head.

It doesn't.

These riots were never about the cartoons. It's an excuse for militants to behave like sociopaths.

...In Cairo, Bishop Karsten Nissen, of Denmark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, met with Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of al-Azhar University, the world's highest Sunni Muslim seat of learning.

Tantawi said the Danish prime minister must apologize for the drawings and further demanded that the world's religious leaders, including him and Pope Benedict XVI, should meet to write a law that "condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets." He said the United Nations should then impose the law on all countries.

In response, Nissen did not address the issue of a global law but said it was impossible for Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to apologize for what a newspaper had published.

"I have brought to his excellency (Tantawi) the apology of the newspaper, but our prime minister did not draw these cartoons. Our prime minister is not the editor of this newspaper. He cannot apologize for something he did not do," Nissen said.

Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi and other Muslim leaders keep demanding apologies.

Now, Tantawi wants a global law that the United Nations would enforce.

With all due respect, that is one of the lamest suggestions that I've ever heard!

Tantawi can't be serious. How can he possibly think that Annan's corrupt UN could possibly monitor the world's press and mete out punishment for printing material that a group finds offensive?

Moreover, what makes Tantawi think the irrelevant UN has the right to censor free people and the exchange of ideas?

It's nuts! It's silly! Tantawi seems to be truly out of touch with reality.

For the sake of argument, let's say there was such a global law. Do you think for one moment that militant Muslims would ever abide by it? Do you think suddenly they would respect Jews?

No chance. No way. Never.

Tantawi should be issuing apologies instead of demanding them. He should be begging forgiveness from the Free World, the civilized world, for all the death and destruction that these protests have wrought over the past two and a half weeks.

Yes, Tantawi MUST apologize. All the rioters must apologize. They must show remorse for their reprenhensible actions. They must be held accountable for what they've done.

They must issue a personal apology to Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard for threatening his life.

[Westergaard] used an interview with a British newspaper to defend the right to a free press - and said the Islamic faith provided 'spiritual ammunition' for terrorism.

...The cartoonist at the heart of the row, who has gone into hiding after a bounty was put on his head and conducted his interview with the Glasgow Herald newspaper via written questions, said he had not expected such controversy but did not regret the drawings - the most controversial of which depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban - or their publication.

He defended it as 'a protest against the fact that we perhaps are going to have double standards [in Denmark and Western Europe] for freedom of expression and freedom of the press'. The inspiration for it was, he said, 'terrorism - which gets its spiritual ammunition from Islam.'

It's a disgrace that American liberal media outlets and Dems have not defended Westergaard, loudly and clearly.

Since President Bush took office in 2001, the Old Media and Dems have warned about the Administration eroding our freedoms. John Ashcroft was the devil incarnate. Throughout Bush's time in office, they have kept coming up with someone to demonize as a threat to liberty. Samuel Alito is probably the most recent individual to be accused by the libs of threatening the basic rights of Americans.

They keep pointing fingers and complaining about the chill wind of censorship that surrounds the Bush Administration, yet I haven't heard any of these libs come out in strong support of Kurt Westergaard.

That could be because they have been preoccupied with covering the drunken Cheney's attempted assassination of Harry Whittington. Of course, that story is just a week old. They really have no excuse for remaining silent during the ten days of rioting against free speech that took place prior to the shot heard 'round Leftist circles.

They have spent seven days, and counting, obsessing about an ACCIDENT, giving their undivided attention to a story that is not important in terms of the grand global scheme of things.

The Dems and the lib media really should get around to defending free speech and to condemning the violent intimidation tactics being employed by radical Islam.

That should be number one on their to-do list. At this point, they're coming off as unglued as Tantawi and the Muslim rioters.