Wanderlust

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Well, this is just ridiculous

And offensive and against his own people's interests... Unbelievable. And doesn't bode well for the mettle of the region's leadership.

February 8, 2006
Chechnya Expels Danish Aid Agency
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

MOSCOW, Feb. 7 -- The Danish Refugee Council, one of the largest aid organizations working in war-racked Chechnya and its neighboring republics, was expelled from Chechen territory on Tuesday, as anger spread yet further over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Ramzan A. Kadyrov, acting prime minister of Chechnya and the head of President Vladimir V. Putin's political party in the region, said Monday that Chechnya would not admit "anything that comes out of Denmark."

He said that any Danish social organizations already in Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim republic, would be ejected.

The Danish Refugee Council is an umbrella group for more than 30 charitable organizations. Since 1997 it has provided relief in Chechnya through food aid, registration of refugees, mine-risk education and home rebuilding.

On Tuesday representatives of the council struggled to impress upon critics that it was a private charity with no connection to the cartoons that have inflamed much of the Muslim world.

posted by ~R @ 8:40 am  

7 Comments:

  • At 2:30 pm, Blogger World Traveler said…

    I think I know more about Denmark then ever before. NOt sure what I think about that. I do know that when a Dane speaks a Swede can understand him and respond in Swedish and the same result!

    Amazing!

    As for the cartoon blowup, I think that you are on the money with many of your thoughts. I think Arab leaders often prefer when their citizens are in an anti-West frenzy because it distracts from their own tyranny. Religion is a fabulous blindfold.

    oohh.that should be a bumper sticker.

     

  • At 3:59 pm, Blogger ~R said…

    I used to know a rather rude and useful phrase in Danish. Now I only know the rude part.

    :)

    That would be a good bumper sticker :)

     

  • At 4:57 pm, Blogger ~R said…

    Okay, so as not to spend every blog entry here on out on this topic, I'm using this space instead.

    These are excerpts from this article in the NYT today:
    A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery
    By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

    ...Over art? These are made-up pictures. The photographs from Abu Ghraib were documents of real events, but they didn't provoke such widespread violence. What's going on?...

    Interesting...

    ...What may be overlooked this time is a deep, abiding fact about visual art, its totemic power: the power of representation. This power transcends logic or aesthetics. Like words, it can cause genuine pain. ...

    And what's more, captions can interpret images, and the caption is what's driving this, I imagine. Because the caption is up for grabs. Our mental caption is: this is culturally acceptable. And theirs is: sacrilege.

    ...Irate Muslim protesters set fire to the Danish and Norwegian missions in Damascus, where Syrian newspapers routinely print the most appalling, racist cartoons of big-nosed Jews. ...

    So of course there's a double standard.

    What I also find interesting is the way in which it has translated into "All Danes" as opposed to anything more vague or more "establishment" or philosophical. Each Dane is guilty.

    If you go to the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/arts/design/08imag.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, the picture pretty much establishes that.

     

  • At 10:03 am, Blogger World Traveler said…

    well, come on..every Middle Eastern male is a terrorist, right?

     

  • At 10:07 am, Blogger World Traveler said…

    Oops..using the "t" word has probably flagged your site.

    Let's me make reparations:

    Dear Mr. Late-Night Web Surfer Fed Spook,

    The comments posted here do not reflect necessarily reflect the opinions of the blog administrator or author. In fact, many of the comments here are made in gest and political irony. Realizing that irony poorly translate via internet, I understand your visit. However, there is nothing to flag here and please keep in mind that comments are almost always taken clearly by the author and reader because of the established relationship between author and reader. I apologize for the inconvenience and I wish you happy hunting for true threats to our national security.

    WT

     

  • At 2:14 pm, Blogger ~R said…

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/international/americas/13muslim.html

    Another article, but this one *finally* has a different voice. Although I should be looking more widely for these voices:

    U.S. Muslims Try to Ease Europe's Discord
    By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
    Published: February 13, 2006

    As the crisis over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad flared over the last two weeks, leaders of several American Muslim groups began working quietly to try to mediate between European Muslims and the West.

    The leaders — representing three national organizations and two mosques — say they share the outrage over the cartoons felt by Muslims in countries where riots have turned bloody and Danish embassies have been burned. Yet in phone calls to Muslim leaders in Europe and in interviews with media outlets in the Middle East like Al Jazeera, they have offered a consistent message to Muslims: you must stop the violence because the Prophet Muhammad would never have approved, and you are playing into the stereotype of Muslims as barbarians.

    At the same time, in meetings at the Washington embassies of European nations, the American Muslim leaders have presented their concerns to foreign diplomats: we, too, value free speech, but your governments should condemn the cartoons as hateful and bigoted and work at better integrating your alienated Muslim minorities.

    "The reason that Muslims in America have not responded the way they have in Europe is that we have come to know that so many people here speak out against such bigotries, and so many newspapers have not published the cartoons," said Mohamed Magid, the imam and executive director of a large mosque in Virginia, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, who was among a group of Muslim leaders who met with the ambassador of Denmark, Friis Arne Petersen, last week in Washington.

    The American Muslim leaders are holding up their approach to living in a Western nation as a model. They told the Danish ambassador that they had lived in the United States longer than Muslims have lived in most European countries, and despite obstacles had managed to build effective organizations and achieve greater integration, acceptance and economic success than their brethren in Europe have. They portray the cartoons as part of a wave of global Islamophobia and have encouraged Muslim groups in Europe to use the same term.

    "We told the ambassador flat out that the biggest resource you have is the American Muslim community," said Ahmed Younis, national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, referring to the meeting with Mr. Petersen. "We, too, deal with Islamophobia and discrimination, but we have developed lines of communication for trying to resolve these problems."

    The American Muslims noted that a group of Danish Islamic clerics had traveled to Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East in December to try to stir up support and force an apology from the paper that published the cartoons, but that one result was an uproar among Muslims around the world.

    The American Muslims are encouraging European Muslims to build better alliances with leaders of other faiths. In the United States, Muslims across the country intensified their involvement in interfaith organizations after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an effort they say has helped defuse tension.

    Asked why Europe's Muslims would listen to America's, Abdul Karim Bangura, a professor of international relations and Islamic studies at American University, said, "Muslims in America and in Canada are doing very well economically and in other ways, and that gives them pretty significant clout to get Muslims in Europe to listen to what they have to say."

    How the American Muslims' efforts will play out in Europe remains unclear. Muslim leaders in Europe insist that they have already been playing a pivotal role in appealing for calm and persuading some Muslims to vent their anger through peaceful means.

    After the publication of the cartoons in Denmark and Norway last fall, a French newspaper reprinted them on Feb. 1. On Wednesday, another French paper followed suit. Several Muslim organizations in France are planning legal action.


    Abdul Wahid Pedersen, an influential imam in Denmark, said Friday that Denmark's 250,000 Muslims could learn from their American counterparts by becoming more united. "In the past the community here has been divided, and this had made it difficult to speak with one voice," he said. "It is important in a crisis like this that moderate voices in the community are heard."

    Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, said American Muslim leaders had been invited by Danish Muslim groups to help ease relations with the Danish government. Mr. Awad said the Danish Muslims were looking to the American Muslims for advice because they were aware that when anti-Muslim statements were made in the past by American religious leaders or talk show hosts, the American Muslim groups had persuaded the Bush administration to issue denunciations.

    Karen P. Hughes, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, said, "The voices of Muslim Americans have more credibility in the Muslim world frankly than my voice as a government official, because they can speak the language of their faith and can share their experience of practicing their faith freely in the West, and they can help explain why the cartoons are so offensive."

    Muslim American leaders say they feel anguish over the Muslim world's violent protests, which have left at least 11 people dead. Azeem Khan, assistant secretary general of the Islamic Circle of North America, based in New York, said, "It hurts us when people attack embassies, because it reinforces the image that we were protesting in the first place, which is that Muslims are violent."

    Imam Magid said he recently told worshipers at his mosque that during the Prophet Muhammad's life, a woman threw trash in his house, and other people called him crazy and spat in his face. "He responded by forgiving her and asking God to guide those who had wronged him," he said. "I told them every time a Muslim commits a suicide bombing, walks into a pizza place and kills innocent people, that person has offended their own prophet."

    Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from Paris for this article.

     

  • At 2:20 pm, Blogger ~R said…

    Shann, how sad is this wretched bugging thing? Shite and shite.

    ...

    Reminds me of one time I was talking with a person from the other side of the Curtain. It was during Bush's first administration. I angrily decried the fact that our liberties were being restricted in the name of freedom. The person laughed, and said, basically: "been there, done that."

    :) Here we are again...

    ~ R

     

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