As time unfolds it will be interesting to see how the pc crowd from the 60's handles this ball of melting wax. So many grand statements of support for diversity and the misunderstood and oppressed. Just imagine that crowd on the recieving end of nastiness. How will they handle it? Peace is the answer. Just leave it alone and it will not bother anyone who is not interested in being bothered. Way cool! Don't boggart that joint my friend...got another fiddle?
Gary Larson got out when the getting was good. My Man!
Libyans burn Italy consulate in cartoon protest
Police kill up to 11 demonstrators as violence spreads to another country
Updated: 8:45 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2006
TRIPOLI, Libya - The publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad continued to send shock waves around the world Friday as protesters set fire to the Italian consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and clashed with police hours after an Islamic cleric in Pakistan offered a $1 million reward for killing one of the cartoonists.
Libyan security officials said 11 protesters were killed or wounded in the clashes in Benghazi.
An Italian consular official, Antonio Simoes-Goncalves, put the death toll at nine and said several more had been wounded as armed police clashed with a crowd of more than 1,000 demonstrators.
Libyan state television showed a part of the consulate building on fire, and firefighters trying to extinguish it.
The Italian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the first floor of the building had been set on fire after the crowd charged into the grounds of the consulate late Friday. In a statement in Rome, the ministry said the consulate was being protected by Libyan security forces.
Security officials said the demonstrators hurled stones and bottles at the consulate, and later entered the grounds and set fire to the building and a consular car.
Police fired shots to try to disperse the crowd, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Hard-to-control crowd
Simoes-Goncalves told the Associated Press in Rome that the Libyan police were not able to control the crowd, even though they were firing bullets and tear gas.
"They are still continually firing," he said at 4 p.m. ET, speaking on the telephone from inside the consulate where he was holed up. "They haven't managed to block them."
He said the rioters had torched four cars in the consulate compound and also broke windows of the building.
No Italians inside the compound were injured, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.
Numerous riots and demonstrations have occurred the Muslim world in recent weeks over 12 cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September. They were republished in many other European newspapers earlier this month.
Earlier, a Pakistani cleric was placed under house detention after announcing a $1 million bounty for killing one of the cartoonists who drew the caricatures, as thousands rallied across the country and authorities arrested scores of protesters.
Five people have been killed in Pakistan this week during protests, but most demonstrations Friday were peaceful.
In Denmark, where the prophet drawings were first published in September, the government said Friday it had temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan following the violent protests this week.
Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Denmark for “consultations” about the caricatures, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.
Cash and a car
Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, prayer leader at the historic Mohabat Khan mosque in the conservative northwestern city of Peshawar, announced the mosque and the Jamia Ashrafia religious school he leads would give a $25,000 reward and a car for killing the cartoonist who drew the prophet caricatures — considered blasphemous by Muslims.
He also said a local jewelers’ association would give $1 million, but no representative of the association was available to confirm the offer.
“Whoever has done this despicable and shameful act, he has challenged the honor of Muslims. Whoever will kill this cursed man, he will get $1 million from the association of the jewelers bazaar, 1 million rupees ($16,700) from Masjid Mohabat Khan and 500,000 rupees ($8,350) and a car from Jamia Ashrafia as a reward,” Qureshi told about 1,000 people outside the mosque after Friday prayers.
[apparently powerball is banned there.]
“This is a unanimous decision by all imams (prayer leaders) of Islam that whoever insults the prophets deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end, will get this prize.”
Qureshi did not name any cartoonist in his announcement and did not appear to be aware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures. The crowd outside the mosque burned a Danish flag and an effigy of the Danish prime minister.
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first printed the prophet drawings by 12 cartoonists in September. The newspaper has since apologized to Muslims for the drawings, one of them showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse.
Cartoonists go underground
Other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe but also some in the United States, have reprinted the pictures, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.
A spokesman for Jyllands-Posten did not want to comment on Qureshi’s offer.
“We are not going to discuss this with that kind of people,” Tage Clausen said.
The cartoonists have gone underground and lived under police protection since the conflict started escalating last year. The president of the Danish Journalist Union, Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, who is a spokesman for the cartoonists, would not say whether security surrounding them had been increased.
The publication of the drawings set off weeks of protests across the Muslim world in which at least 19 people have been killed, most of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In Islamabad, former President Clinton criticized the drawings but said Muslims wasted an opportunity to build better ties with the West by mounting violent protests.
[hey, better to be honest then hypocritical, Mr. former president]
“I can tell you most people in the United States deeply respect Islam ... and most people in Europe do,” he said.
Protests across Pakistan
Clerics at mosques across Pakistan condemned the caricatures at Friday prayers.
“Give enough power to the Muslim countries and enable them to take revenge,” said Qari Saeed Ullah, a prayer leader in Islamabad.
Thousands of demonstrators defied a ban on rallies in Punjab, one of Pakistan’s four provinces. Thousands of security forces were deployed across the country to prevent unrest.
Police arrested 125 protesters for violating the ban on rallies in eastern Pakistan and 70 others after firing tear gas to disperse protests in the southern city of Karachi.
In Peshawar, where violent protests Wednesday left two dead and scores injured, police fired tear gas to disperse more than 1,000 people trying to block a street. Four effigies representing Danish, German, French and Norwegian leaders were hanged from lampposts.
Police in eastern Punjab province were ordered to restrict the movement of all religious leaders who might address rallies and to round up religious activists who could threaten law and order.
In Multan, another city in Punjab, about 300 police detained 125 protesters, who gathered at a traffic circle, chanting, “We are slaves of the prophet,” and trampling on a Danish flag, police official Sharif Zafar said.
[make a joyful noise unto the lord]
Zafar said they had violated the ban on rallies in Punjab — declared after deadly riots in Lahore on Tuesday.
Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, chief of the radical group Jamaat al-Dawat, became the first religious leader detained by authorities since protests began in Pakistan early this month. He was due to make a speech in Faisalabad, about 75 miles away.
Intelligence officials have said scores of members of Jamaat al-Dawat and assorted militant groups joined the Lahore protest Tuesday and incited the violence in a bid to undermine President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s government, a close ally of the United States.
Witnesses said about 7,000 people protested in Rawalpindi, near the capital, while about 5,000 demonstrated in the southwestern city of Quetta. There were no immediate reports of violence. About 5,000 people protested in Karachi in small-scale rallies, and 70 were arrested, said Rauf Siddiqi, the regional home minister.
Danish closures
Denmark’s decision to close its embassy comes after the government temporarily closed its embassies in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Indonesia last week amid anti-Danish protests and threats against staff.
“We have decided to do so because of the general security situation in the country,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lars Thuesen said of the Pakistani closure. “Our staff are still in the country but not at the embassy in Islamabad.”
Reporters Without Borders, a leading media watchdog group, urged the release of six journalists held in Algeria and Yemen for reprinting the prophet drawings.
In India, police used batons and tear gas to disperse several thousand angry Muslims worshippers who rioted over the drawings, police said. The protesters burned Danish flags, pelted police with stones, and looted shops after Friday prayers in Hyderabad, a city of 7 million people, nearly half of them Muslim.
Thousands of Hong Kong Muslims also marched Friday to condemn the caricatures.
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