Don't believe what you see on the news...

All is peaceful in DK

After my previous post regarding the Mohammed Cartoons had pictures of burning buildings and trodden-upon flags one might be forgiven for imagining that Armageddon had indeed come. But not here in DK.

There are television debates but as much as they are heartfelt, they are lucid and articulate from both sides. There have been threats to the offices of Jyllands Posten, the newspaper that printed the cartoons originally, but mostly they are in the form of calls and email, not packs of angry people with weapons and burning flags.


There have been some protests in the street but most of them have actually been Danish folks – immigrants and Danes together – against the violence and vandalism. "We should work together to find a solution," they said.

Bendt Bendtsen, the leader of one of the two conservative parties who are in the government coalition spoke out against the printing of the images, suggested that the Mohammed drawings were to Muslims like it might be for many Christians to see “an image of Jesus with an erect penis”. No photo was attached…

The Danish National Front – who describe themselves as “National Socialists” in the previously popular style of the little German guy with one testicle – held a demonstration last weekend and not even they could get their act together for a good, old-fashioned book burning: Bible, Talmud or Koran. "Nobody burned the Koran, police assert"

As you can see Danes love their candles. Actually looks pretty cosy… The weather is way too cold for skin heads anyway!

It appears to me that here in Denmark, even the Muslims that were insulted by the drawings cannot relate to the violence and rhetoric that seem to be streaming out of the Islamic World. This is the clearest sign to me that this violent reaction has little to do with Islam and more to do with the politics of nations run by dictators and theocratic kings that need to whip up hatred of the foreign “Kafir” in a bid to justify their arbitrary and self-interested leadership. Think about this when you are watching the news images and you might look at them in a different light.