Word: damascus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...free speech and democratic pluralism—an intolerance that reiterates the gaping incompatibility between dogmatic religion and democratic dissent. After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran a cartoon depicting the prophet Mohammed dressed as a suicide bomber, many Muslims rose up in arms, setting embassies in Beirut and Damascus ablaze, storming the European Union (EU) office in Gaza, boycotting Danish products or withdrawing their ambassadors, and desecrating the Danish flag. The cartoon, clearly offensive for its rendition of the prophet as a terrorist, further incensed Muslims, for whom any depiction of Mohammed is sacrilegious. Despite the odious nature...
...many others motivated by genuine outrage at the perceived desecration of the most revered figure in Islam. Yet even for Westerners sympathetic to Muslims' right to vent their anger, the mayhem that marked the protests last week was as unsettling as the cartoons themselves. A day after mobs in Damascus torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies, rioters set fire to the Danish consulate in Beirut; Iranians hurled gasoline bombs at Denmark's embassy in Tehran and smashed the windows of Austria's. In Afghanistan a protest outside a U.S. military base left two people dead after local police opened fire...
...wake of the initial protests. (One of the images, purportedly showing Muhammad with a pig's nose, was a photograph of a costumed contestant at a pig festival in France.) In December the delegates showed the entire dossier to journalists, religious and political leaders in Cairo, Lebanon and Damascus. Within days, the contents were being circulated on the Internet and condemned by Muslim bloggers, even though the most derogatory images in the dossier had never even been published. Says Quraishy: "I don't think these representatives knew what they started...
...London held up signs proclaiming EXTERMINATE THOSE WHO MOCK ISLAM and BE PREPARED FOR THE REAL HOLOCAUST; the editor of the French newspaper France-Soir was fired for reprinting the drawings; Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the publication; and protesters set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. The Egyptian ambassador to Denmark expressed disbelief that the government would not prevent further reprinting. Freedom of the press, the Egyptian explained, "means the whole story will continue and that we are back to square one again. The government of Denmark has to do something to appease the Muslim world...
...Muslim preachers can hardly be restrained from calling the faithful to action. "It is the duty of all Muslims to wake up from their deep sleep and defend their religion," declared an imam broadcasting a sermon live on Algeria's national television network last week. If the scenes in Damascus and Beirut are anything to go by, more confrontation is still to come...