Hypocrisy - or ..

By Poul Højlund, February 17, 2006


Credits to David Horsey, Washington, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer for the cartoon.

I know I should go into the copyrighth thing, but no one reads this anyhow. You may quote me unlimited instead. Deal?


Here's how I see it:

Sometimes it looks like something, Saddam Hussein's minister of information, Muhammadd Saeed al-Sahaf, put up:

Why is it that the pictures from Abu Graib - no new ones, just the ordinary old ones - can continue to cause an outrage when every Muslim country has more problems to say the least in their own prisons?

Why have the Hamas-leaders come to be the darlings of the greater parts of the Muslim world, when every one else gets the picture of a bunch of Jihad warriors always ready to sacrifice the innocent to achieve their goals?

Why do some harmless cartoons create riots and uproar when Arab papers print the most insane and anti-Semitic drawings with Israelis as rats and Sharon eating babies?

Why do the OIC countries continue to have their own set of Human Rights (The Cairo-declaration) and on the same time sign up to UN Human Rights without any one protesting? And without due respect to any of the two?

Why was the cartoon depicting a bomb in the turban of Muhammad the most offensive when it is a matter of fact that almost any terror during the last decades was committed in the name of that prophet?

How is it that almost any media comment from the Islamic World,even the brightest ones, contains some sort of balancing terror against freedom, some justifying of the most horrible misdeeds, some eye for eye thing on terrorist versus anything that the unspecified West did to us Muslims?

The answer seems simple and unfortunately the same for all the questions: the double standards of the self declared victim of history: the Islamic World.

It makes the Islamic world look so far away, so hypocritical, so unable to take a binding dialogue, so much willing to take a further step into the wilderness of deceiving one self.

Any idea of how to get forward?, any?

I guess, it must be felt as an insult to read this?

Same old Western picture, same Islamophobia? At least if you belong to my general category The Islam World and you see the double standards daily? You may even
try to fight them by the risk of your life, - something I certainly don't risk.

Maybe it's all true, you think, but grossly unfair because there is so much other in that Islamic world as well? And maybe my words even force you to move further away from me?

Well, that was not the idea.

I admire all you who try to change things, taking all the small and big risks. Must be difficult. I also guess that those keeping you back are your father, your sister, your uncles, your family. And I guess you all more or less agree that the cartoons went far over the edge.

Don't get me wrong: We know we've broken one of your religious taboos. And we mean it when we say that we are truly sorry - for all real pain caused.

Why then print?

We had to print, we defend the printing, and we will continue to brake your taboos, from time to time to prove that the death squads of extreme Islam - yes, they do exist, those who claim the right to kill for the Prophet and in the name of the Prophet, let's not fool ourselves - that they do not rule in this country. Not the slightest little bit.

Can you tell me that we had nothing to fear? Or have nothing to fear? Nothing at all?

We needed to prove to ourselves, that we were in control of this country. Danish law rules Denmark. Not the absolute laws of Islam, - but the democratic ones of our own making.

It had nothing to do with Mohammad, - and it had everything to do with him.

Help us fight those who will kill in the name of a Prophet - instead of condemning us.