mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Dutch prosecutors seem to have come to their senses and decided that anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders should be found not guilty on all counts after all, in spite of the fact that it was the prosecutors who brought the charges against him in the first place.

The intricacies of Dutch law are a mystery to MWW, but it seems unusual for an initially enthusiastic prosecutor to have a complete change of heart by the end of the trial, and admit that their case was essentially nonsense. Refreshing, yes. But strange.

Dutch News reports:

Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.

They said comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban on democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination ‘as laid down in law’.

On the comparison of the Koran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors said the comparison was ‘crude but that did not make it punishable’.

Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.

On Tuesday, the prosecutors said the MP should not be found guilty of group insult.

UPDATE: It gets more farcical by the day. Now the judges have been told to step down, as they displayed such obvious bias against Wilders.

Denmark’s foreign minister, Lene Espersen, has denied reports in Arab media that she apologised for the reprinting of Motoons.

The Egyptian Gazette had misinterpreted Espersen’s conciliatory platitudes as an apology.

I can clearly deny that I have given an apology…But I can confirm that I have said that freedom of expression is not so extensive that it would not have any limits.

Last week Jyllands-Posten arts editor Flemming Rose published a book about the Danish Motoons affair which included several of the drawings. In a meeting with Egypt’s Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb Espersen said that she found it regrettable that many people were offended by the cartoons. This is the exact statement:

The Danish government is well aware that many people felt deeply hurt by the cartoons. I would like once again to make it clear that this is something we find regrettable, and do not wish to see repeated.

I would like to make it clear that the Danish government respects Islam as one of the World’s major religions and we condemn any attempt to demonize groups of people on the basis of their religion or ethnic background.

Under the Danish constitution, every citizen has the right to express himself within the limits of the law without interference from the government.

This standard “sorry you were offended” response – which Danish politicians have been using consistently since 2006 – was rehashed by the Sheik, who claimed that Espersen had “renewed her country’s apology for the publication of these cartoons and pointed out Denmark’s efforts to issue a law criminalising contempt of religions.”

Lars Vilks safely completed his lecture at Uppsala University on Wednesday. There were no disruptions, but four people were turned away at the door.

The lecture was policed by around 130 police officers, and the total cost of security was an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 kroner.

Worth every öre.

This time it’s in Strasbourg. A YouTube video of a man making a paper aeroplane out of a Koran page, then burning and urinating on its ashes, provoked a mosque official to inform the authorities.

The man, who had given his name and location on the video, has now been questioned by police.

Abdeaziz Choukri of the Strasbourg Mosque spoke with the man before calling the police:

He told me ‘We are in France and we can burn a book on Winnie the Pooh, in the same way we can burn the Koran. He was totally coherent and he didn’t seem to realise the impact of his acts.

The charge that the religious authorities are filing against him: incitement of racial hatred.

Correction: A commenter has kindly informed MWW that the book does indeed contain the twelve Motoons. There was conflicting information on this, and we are happy to be corrected.

Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose has just published a book about the Danish Motoons affair. The Tyranny of Silence does not contain reprints of the cartoons, but that hasn’t stopped the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the Algerian Islamic Council, and Hezbollah from condemning the publishers for reprinting them anyway.

The OIC’s idiot in chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu expressed his “dismay and disappointment” at the release, asserting that the Danish government had a “moral responisibility” to prevent the publication.

The publication of the book was a deliberate attempt to incite prejudices and animosity which would undermine the ongoing efforts of the international community for promoting understanding and peaceful coexistence among peoples of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds.

The Algerian High Islamic Council said,

The HIC vigorously denounces the reproduction in some western countries of cartoons that offend Islam and its sacred symbols.

And Hezbollah claimed that the publication was a declaration of refusal to respect the feelings of Muslims:

This also demonstrates their insistence on insulting the Muslims’ sanctities, presenting a cause of tension in the good relations that should exist between different religions in the world. This is what these governments should take full responsibility of.

When will these clowns realise that the main thing that excites “prejudice and animosty” against Islam is the ill-informed over-reactions to non-events from organisations such as themselves.

The Daily Cartoonist reports that a popular Sunday cartoon strip has been spiked by several newspapers because it mentions Muhammad.

Wiley Miller’s frequently brilliant Non Sequitur depicts a park scene with the caption, Picture book title voted least likely to ever find a publisher… ‘Where’s Muhammad?’

This was enough to put the fear of fatwa into ‘upwards of 20′ newspaper editors, who have asked for a replacement. Mr Miller notes

the irony of editors being afraid to run even such a tame cartoon as this that satirizes the blinding fear in media regarding anything surrounding Islam sadly speaks for itself. Indeed, the terrorists have won.

UPDATE: Here is the cartoon in question:

I think that’s him standing behind the little girl at the ice-cream stand.

Lars Vilks, the Modoggie artist whose free-speech lecture was so rudely interrupted last May, has been invited back to Uppsala university for a second attempt to complete his talk.

Folke Tersman, the head of the university’s philosophy department, says:

That a university lecture is interrupted by violence is a serious thing, regardless of the opinion that provoked the reaction… It is incompatible with the basic values democracy is based on. It is to uphold these values that we are inviting him again.

This is what happened the first time:

It has been a while since Stephen Green has graced the pages of this blog. His pronouncements are becoming increasingly irrelevant and dull, but the photo used to illustrate his latest outburst is so lovely that we just had to include it.

Look into my eyes: The sane and rational Mr Green warns of the dangers of the occult

The object of his righteous wrath is GP Taylor, who is currently promoting his latest book, Vampyre Labyrinth. According to Green, the vicar-turned-novelist is attempting to involve young people in “the dangerous world of the occult”.

Says Green:

Shame on any head teacher who invites GP Taylor into their school with this book. It is up to head teachers to behave more responsibly and if I was a parent at a school that allowed him in I’d be straight up to the school and demanding answers from the head teacher.

Don’t get involved in those weird beliefs and practices. They can send you mad!

UPDATE: (Sept 30) Nanny Pattison of Mediawatch-UK has put her oar in as well, using the cooked-up controversy to push an idea of ratings for books:

The Vampire Labyrinth raises the question as to whether books should be classified as U/PG/15 or 18 and some kind of warning given to parents, as it contains scenes of graphic horror and violence, including stabbing, burning, torture and throat-ripping.

That’s one way to get the Bible out of schools. With all its violence and smut, it would have to be given an 18 certificate.

Burning books is not illegal. Much as it rankles to defend book-burners of any stripe, be they BNP racists, halfwit Christian fundamentalists, or anti-Rushdie rage-boys, the act of converting paper to carbon through combustion – provided the paper is yours and you are not endangering life or property – is harmless.

So when news comes from Gateshead that six men have been arrested after filming themselves burning copies of the Koran, you know that something is seriously wrong.

As the video clearly demonstrates, these men are idiots. They are probably EDL supporters, and racists to boot. But what they did is not – cannot be – illegal.

They were arrested on suspicion of “inciting racial hatred”. Not only is Islam – represented here by its holy book – not a race, but the only hatred that such an act is likely to incite would be directed at themselves, and would come from a particular kind of Muslim.

The racial and religious hatred law, for all its faults, was not designed to prevent you from committing acts which make other people hate you. Otherwise every homosexual, fornicator, and abortionist would be under arrest for inciting the hatred of some religious loon.

There cannot be a law against burning books. There especially cannot be a law against burning one particular book. If these men are convicted, then such a law is exactly what we will have.

If these men are convicted, the best course of action is a campaign of civil disobedience. Korans must be burned – but not as a protest against Islam, or Islamism, or “Islamisation”. The new wave of Koran burning will be about something much more important than any of those things: the laws of this country, and the defence of freedom of expression.

It is the only time that book-burning is a defensible tactic: to show that it can be done.

We interrupt a long blog silence to bring a rare piece of unequivocally good news. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken in defence of Danish Motoonist Kurt Westergaard.

The occasion was the presentation of the M100 Sanssouci Media Award to Westergaard for his defence of free speech. In her presentation speech, Merkel said:

Europe is a place where a cartoonist is allowed to draw something like this… We are talking here about the freedom of opinion and the freedom of the press… It’s about whether in a Western society with its values he [Mr Westergaard] is allowed to publish his Muhammad cartoons, or not. Is he allowed to do it? Yes he is.

Of course, the Central Council of Muslims in Germany criticized the award ceremony. Ayman Mazyek said:

Merkel is honoring the cartoonist who in our view trampled on our prophet and trampled on all Muslims.

No he didn’t. He drew a cartoon.