On the Man who Commissioned the "Cartoons"

[Below is an article on Flemming Rose the cultural editor of the paper that published the offensive cartoons, and below it is an article by Flemming Rose himself in 2004 on Islam and on his interaction with the neocon Daniel Pipes. In other words the offensive cartoons were not the work of an over-zealous cartoonist, but a deliberate effort by a confirmed Zionist to denigrate and provoke the Islamic world.]

http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=508448

Photo: Flemming Rose, the cultural editor responsible for the offensive anti-Muslim cartoons, on a trip to Estonia. Rose is a supporter of the Zionist "clash of civilizations" promoted by the Neo-Con Daniel Pipes.

 European Media Provokes Muslims to Inflame Zionist "Clash Of Civilizations"

Christopher Bollyn

American Free Press

Feb 4, 2006

Under the guise of free speech, a leading Danish newspaper published a dozen provocative anti-Islamic cartoons clearly designed to offend Muslims. The predictable result has greatly increased the possibility of violence and left Denmark in a costly and dangerous predicament.

Four months after Jyllands-Posten (JP), Denmark's most widely read morning paper, published 12 anti-Islamic cartoons, Danes woke up to the fact that there is a very high price to be paid for promoting the "clash of civilizations."

The fact that the editors behind the anti-Islamic images claim to be exercising free speech while refusing to address Europe's strict censorship laws regarding discussion of the Holocaust and the ongoing imprisonment of historical revisionists reveals the existence of a more sinister agenda behind the provocative cartoons.

"Agents of certain persuasion" are behind the egregious affront to Islam in order to provoke Muslims, Professor Mikael Rothstein of the University of Copenhagen told the BBC. The key "agent" is Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of JP, who commissioned cartoonists to produce the blasphemous images and then published them in Denmark's leading morning paper last September.

The International Herald Tribune, which reported on the offensive cartoons on January 1, noted that even the liberalism of Rose had its limits when it came to criticism of Zionist leaders and their crimes. Rose also has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons behind the "war on terror."

Rose told the international paper owned by The New York Times that "he would not publish a cartoon of Israel's Ariel Sharon strangling a Palestinian baby, since that could be construed as 'racist.'"

Asked why he was protecting Sharon, a known war criminal, while abusing Muslims and their Prophet in the name of free speech, Rose told American Free Press that he had been "misquoted" in the Times article.

Rose traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares "militant Islam" with fascism and communism.

In April 2003, President George W. Bush nominated the rabid anti-Muslim Pipes to the board of the United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally sponsored think tank dedicated to "the peaceful resolution of international conflicts."

Ministers from 17 Muslim nations condemned the publication of the cartoons as an egregious "offense to Islam" and called on the Danish government to ensure that it would not be repeated.

When the Danish government, which supports the "war on terror" with more than 500 troops in Iraq, refused to issue an apology for the offensive cartoons, Muslim consumers across the Middle East began a boycott of Danish products.

Within days the boycott had severely affected Danish exporters and the politicians in Copenhagen scrambled to undo the damage. Arla Foods, a large Danish-Swedish dairy company, was badly hit by the boycott. The company, which had annual sales of some $480 million in the Middle East, saw its sales in the region plummet to nil as Muslim shopkeepers pulled Danish products off the shelves.

"We have taken 40 years to build up a very big business in the Middle East, and we've seen it come to a complete stop in five days," company spokeswoman Astrid Gade Niels told the BBC.

"Our sales in the Middle East have come to a complete stop - in all countries in the region," she said. "We have found ourselves in the middle of a game that we have no part in."

As the boycott damaged Danish business and a bomb scare closed the office of his newspaper, Rose continued to defend his decision to commission and publish the offensive cartoons. "We stand by the publication of these 12 cartoons," he said.

Asked if he would have done it knowing what the reaction would be, Rose said: "That is a hypothetical question. I would say that I do not regret having commissioned those cartoons and I think asking me that question is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt Friday night at the discotheque."

The dangerous "game" that was started by the Danish editor has now been picked up by at least 7 newspapers across Europe. Supposedly in support of the Danes, papers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland simultaneously reprinted the cartoons on February 1. The timing suggests that this response was coordinated by a hidden hand.

In Paris, for example, Arnaud Levy, editor-in-chief of the financially-strapped France-Soir, chose to print all 12 of the offensive cartoons. Asked if there had been coordination between European editors about the simultaneous publication of the cartoons, Levy said, "Absolutely not."

The following day, Jacques Lefranc, managing editor of France-Soir, was fired by the paper's owner Raymond Lakah, an Egyptian magnate, according to employees. Chief editor Levy, however, remained on the job.

Peter Mandelson, Trade Commissioner for the European Union, strongly reprimanded the newspapers for pouring "oil on the fire" by reprinting the offensive cartoons.

Robert M�nard, secretary general of Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based media monitor, however, supported the publication of the blasphemous cartoons saying, "All countries in Europe should be behind the Danes and Danish authorities to defend the principle that a newspaper can write what it wishes to, even if it offends people.

"I understand that it may shock Muslims, but being shocked is part of the price of being informed," he told The New York Times.

However, when it comes to discussion of the Holocaust, media monitors like M�nard accept without question the government-imposed censorship laws and imprisonment of historical revisionists. At least 4 well known historians are currently in prison in Germany and Austria for writing and speaking about the Holocaust.

There is clearly a more sinister reason why the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen refuses to issue a formal apology as demanded by Arab and Muslim governments. The hard-line position taken by Rasmussen, an ally in the "war on terror," has more to do with advancing the "clash of civilizations" than defending free speech in Europe.

It is well known that Islam is an aniconic religion which prohibits depictions of the Prophet in the same way that the Second Commandment prohibits "graven images." The European editors are certainly aware of the fact that Islam prohibits the use of icons or visual images to depict living creatures and that it is blasphemous to publish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Yet, they have recklessly and intentionally insulted millions of Muslims and are unwilling to apologize.

"The Danish paper set out to offend and provoke outrage in the Muslim community," a Muslim in Britain wrote to the BBC. "Muslims are able to distinguish between those who wish to debate and those who wish to insult. Trying to camouflage insults under the guise of debate or free speech fools nobody."

There is a deeper reason behind the publication of the offensive cartoons. Given the unapologetic position taken by the Danish government and the editors it appears very likely that tension with Islamic nations will increase and the international crisis will deepen. This is, after all, exactly what the global planners behind the "clash of civilizations" want.

The completely predictable reaction among Muslims sets the stage for violence and "false-flag" terror attacks as Europeans prepare to host the Olympics in Turin, Italy. The Turin-based La Stampa irresponsibly published the cartoons on Feb. 1, two days after Milan's Corriere della Sera.

The anti-Islamic cartoon scandal is no laughing matter. If and when a terror attack does occur and the cartoons and angry Muslims are blamed for being the cause, the reason they were published will become clear. Europeans will become increasingly polarized and hostility to Islam will grow.

A month ago, when I first became aware of the provocative anti-Muslim cartoons published in JP, I immediately contacted the editors and asked why they had allowed their newspaper to be dragged into such a ridiculous and provocative situation.

With Europe already involved in two Middle Eastern wars and with the political tension with Iran increasing daily, I asked the editors, "Do you truly wish to antagonize Muslims?"

"I support freedom of speech and am against self-censorship," Rose, who commissioned the cartoons, wrote in response. It was, however, clearly not simply to exercise Denmark's non-existent freedom of speech that Rose commissioned the anti-Muslim cartoons. The more sinister motive of advancing the "clash of civilizations" among Europeans was evidently behind the offensive images.

"If the issue is really one of free speech, would you publish cartoons making fun of the Jewish Holocaust?" I asked Rose and the editors. "If not, do you at least support the right of newspapers and individuals to raise historical questions about the Holocaust?"

Yet after a month of correspondence with Rose and the editors, they have completely avoided answering my questions about the Holocaust and the right of free speech for historical revisionists in Europe.

Flemming Rose's Love Letter About Daniel Pipes!

Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 03:11:28 -0800 (PST)

Original Dissent

If you don't know by now, Flemming Rose is the Zionist Editor responsible for the insulting cartoons published in the Danish newspaper. He carried on an active venture to solicit the cartoons from contributing cartoonists to be deliberately published to provoke the Muslim world. Below is an article he wrote about Daniel Pipes, one of the most hated enemies of Al-Islam and a dear friend of Zionist and Zionist causes.

Complete translation below.

Quote:

...Rose traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares "militant Islam" with fascism and communism.

Flemming Rose writes:

According to Daniel Pipes� "We prevailed in the confrontations with fascism and communism, because we succeeded in marginalizing the enemy's ideology, made it repulsive in the eyes of the majority. ..We're also obligated to persuade the Islamicists that they're wrong. We must find alternative leaders in the Islamic world, in the same way as Konrad Adenauer appeared in Germany and Boris Yeltsin in Russia. There are two steps: on one side we'll defeat the ideology by means of military power, education, media and ideals, and on the other we'll support anti-Islamicist Muslims, who want to preserve their beliefs, but don't want to live under Islamic law."

The Threat from Islam

by Flemming Rose

Jyllands-Posten

29 October 2004

Translated by Knekkeben at OD

Philadelphia

There is no name-plate on the door, and it's locked. The visitor has to make a quick visit to the neighbor's to find if the address is correct. Yes, indeed it is: The Middle East Forum and Daniel Pipes are found on the tenth story in an anonymous skyscraper a stone's throw from the building where the nation's fathers collected in 1787 to write the country's constitution. Somewhere down on the street below amble along a couple of middle-aged women with election-posters supporting John Kerry who are in the city to get their final punches in. Pennsylvania is one of the so-called "swing-states," which can decide the presidential election on Tuesday.

Even Daniel Pipes doesn't have any doubts where his sympathy lies. He votes for George W. Bush and describes himself as conservative. The 54-year-old historian with expertise in the Middle East and the Middle Ages has since 1994 stood at the top of the think-tank "The Middle East Forum," which sees it as its task to "define and promote American interests in the Middle East." Pipes spoke on and wrote about the threat from Islamicists long before September 11. As early as 1995, he stated that they had started an undeclared war against the USA and Europe. Pipes' voice is so low that he has found it difficult to make himself heard over the buzzing noise from the modest office's air-conditionerm, but nevertheless has this rasping voice caused furor in academic, Western-oriented and certain Muslim circles. When Pipes speaks on militant Islam at universities, he threatens his critics with "trouble" and boycotts. When he was appointed by president Bush to the board of directors at the government's think-tank "US Institute for Peace" last year, he set off outrage, and it's not an accident that there isn't a name-plate on the think-tank's front door.

A totalitarian ideology

Pipes has through 20 years wrote about and spoke of militant Islam as a totalitarian ideology in line with fascism and communism. He hasn't since promoted this perspective on ideals, history and politics. Daniel Pipes' father is named Richard Pipes, one of the 20 leading experts of this century in Russian and Soviet history, who, in conflict with the zeitgeist of the 1960's and the 1970's, insisted on both the Soviet regime's totalitarian nature and hostile focus on the West's liberal democracies. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. "The Islamicists' agenda is very different than the communists' and fascists'. It's about belief, and, unlike communism and fascism, they don't have large states like the Soviet Union and Germany behind them, but if one looks at methods and goals, the similarity is striking," says Daniel Pipes. "All three ideologies are radical utopias, which basically have a theory for how the human race can be improved. Not more or less. All three are dominated by a small appointed elite which will realize this grandiose ideal. They're prepared to use all conceivable means and are true believers, fanatics, and they don't hesitate to resort to force and brutality to carry out their project. They don't admit other perspectives and wish to control all aspects of life. Whenever it's succeeded in a country, the ambition has been to develop its control over others, he adds. "The two earlier confrontations with communism and fascism shed light on the current conflict between the civilized world and militant Islam.

We defeated the first in a total war over a relatively short period, while the second conflict, the Cold War, lasted decades. In the third, militant Islam is the challenge. The kernel of militant Islam's ideology is hidden in the expression 'el Islam wul hal', which means: Islam is the solution. Despite what the question revolves around, education, upbringing, romance, public or private affairs, Islam has the answer. That's the recipe for a totalitarian ideology."

Other than terror

Daniel Pipes' fascination with Islam and the Middle East began, when he, in the beginning of the 1970's, lived in Egypt. At that time, he didn't perceive Islamism as a threat. It happened first with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the assassination of Egypt's president Anwar Sadat two years later, and a wave of assaults on American interests in the region. Pipes believes that it's misleading to talk about the current conflict with the Islamicists as a war against terror. He points out that mistaken definitions and concepts lead to mistaken proposals for solutions. When President Bush goes from stating the figure of killed leaders of Al Qaida to explaining how the war against terror is going, he misses his mark. "That says nothing or very little. It's a euphemism, a circumlocution, to talk about a terror-threat or a war against terror. Terror is a tactic, not an enemy. Nor do we say, here in the USA, that the Second World War was about blitzkrieg. That was a war against fascism," declares Daniel Pipes.

Moderates should be suppported

He lays great importance on the fact that the conflict doesn't concern Islam as a private belief, but rather militant Islam, an aggressive, political ideology which works for the establishment of Islamic law, Sharia, everywhere in the world. This difference implies the germ of the conflict's solution. "If militant Islam is the problem, then the opposite, moderate Islam, must be the solution," concludes Daniel Pipes. "I don't believe that Islam once and for all is doomed to be on a collision-course with the modern world. The majority of Muslims don't want to live under the Taliban in Afghanistan. There are millions of Muslims on our side. The current conflict at the most basic level is a conflict which will be fought and won in the Muslim world." According to Daniel Pipes, it's about finding alternative leaders and ideas, which can take up the fight with militant Islam. "We prevailed in the confrontations with fascism and communism, because we succeeded in marginalizing the enemy's ideology, made it repulsive in the eyes of the majority. In 1991, the Soviet leadership didn't believe in the system any longer. We're also obligated to persuade the Islamicists that they're wrong. We must find alternative leaders in the Islamic world, in the same way as Konrad Adenauer appeared in Germany and Boris Yeltsin in Russia. There are two steps: on one side we'll defeat the ideology by means of military power, education, media and ideals, and on the other we'll support anti-Islamicist Muslims, who want to preserve their believes, but don't want to live under Islamic law. In the same way that we supported anti-communists and anti-Nazis in the Soviety Union and Germany. Finally, this is a struggle between two notions of the Muslims' position in the world.

Not the nature of Islam

Daniel Pipes acknowledges that the current situation doesn't exactly give reason for optimism, but he is nevertheless convinced that the Muslim world sooner or later will define itself positively in relation to the modern world. "The current situation isn't due to the nature of Islam. Judaism is in principle also a statutory religion like Islam, but in this case, it's been successful in finding peaceful coexistence with the modern world. The current situation is the result of a historic development. If you and I had carried on this conversation in the 1930's, I would have pointed at Germany's and Japan's problems with modernization, but that was transient. We possibly would also have noticed the Turkish leader Kemal Atat�rks' attempt to build an alternate, secular model for the Islamic world. For the moment, this idea is unfortunately not especially attractive in the Middle East. The Islamicists' ideas seem more modern and attractive," explains Daniel Pipes.

Third attempt

He then gives a crash-course in the history of the Islamic world. "The first 600 years of Islam's history was that to be Muslim was as playing on a sport's team. [Trans: This sentence puzzles me; can't translate "vinderhold".] There was an advanced society, which managed well materially and spiritually. It was a rich, powerful and healthy world. In the following 600 years, the Islamic world closed itself in and lost connections to what happened in other places, not least of which what happened in Europe. When the Muslims in the 19th Century discovered the West's wealth and power, they asked themselves amazed and shocked, 'What went wrong, and how do we fix it?' The first 120-130 years, that is, to the 1930's, they attempted to imitate the liberal West, first and foremost France and Great Britain. During the following 60 years, they endeavored the other way around to imitate the non-liberal West, that is, fascist and communist currents. Now they're attempting for the third time to answer to the challenge from the West, and, this time, they've turned against the original, non-liberal Islam. It will again fail, and so they'll try something else. I believe that the next attempt will come more to resemble the first imitation of the liberal West than the following two ," rings out contained optimism from Pipes.

Europe amazed

But despite this, he doesn't believe that there is reason to lean back and wait for things to happen by themselves. Pipes is surprised that there isn't greater alarm in Europe over the challenge that Islam represents thanks to falling rates of fertility and a weakened sense for its own history and culture. "It's one of the greatest stories of our time. The response is amazingly relaxed in Europe. There's great denial. It's paradoxical, that the Muslims come from countries that stand weaker economically and politically, while those in rich and strong Europe show greater cultural ambition than the Europeans. It amazes me as an American. Europe has been history's driving-force for the last 500 years, but now it looks to be going the other way. Here in the USA, the situation is far less dramatic." According to Daniel Pipes, the Muslims don't make up more than about 1 percent of the population, 3-4 million people, and their social status is different than in Europe. "There are groups which speak for Islam in the schools and intimidate politicians and Muslims who insist on their right to speak freely. Militant Islam has a comprehensive non-violent agenda. Muslims in the USA are composed of two groups, immigrants and Americans who have converted to Islam. Muslim immigrants have a higher social and economic status than in Europe. They're doctors, engineers and others with a professional education who earn money."

Unsuccessful research

Daniel Pipes has come into conflict with large parts of the academic world. He is critical of much of the research which is conducted within Middle East-studies and believes that it has overlooked or ignored important currents, while in other areas it has been all too quick to attribute to fundamentalists a modernizing or democratizing sense. It has, he believes, often been political with an inclination to the Left. "The left wing is dissatisfied with the societies that have been formed in the West, while the conservative are pleased. The left wing's dissatisfaction and feeling of guilt often means that they're prepared to go much too far to meet the opposition. They seek understanding and compromise, while conservatives are more inclined to take up the confrontation. People in Middle East-studies haven't had en eye for the hostile and violent elements in radical Islam. They ignored Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, the pervasive anti-Semitism, slavery in Sudan, the cultural oppression of the Berbers in northern Africa, and they've attempted to give the impression that the word jihad means something completely different than military effort to develop Islam's territory. Some plainly believe that jihad is about becoming a better person. As if the Palestinian's Islamic Jihad uses the word to become better people."

Facts: blue book

Daniel Pipes is 54 years old. Educated in history at Harvard University. Has held positions in the Department of State (?) and the Department of Defense.

Since 1994, he's concentrated on his service in the think-tank "Middle East Forum" and the exceptionally popular Web-site www.danielpipes.org, which gets more than 2 million hits per year. Pipes has 20,000 subscriptions to a free newsletter on-line. He established Middle East Forum in his home with two friends, but lives today at an exclusive address in downtown Philadelphia, has 15 employees, and a budget of more than 1 million dolars. Pipes is the author of 12 books, the latest titled "Miniatures: Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics."

*****

Many thanks to Knekkeben for his efforts