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IOL - October 9, 2006
Repeated insults to distract Muslims
CAIRO — Denouncing a Danish video lampooning prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings b upon him) and renewing a call for an all-out boycott of Denmark, prominent Muslim scholars warned Monday, October 9, that repeated anti-Islam insults are aimed at distracting Muslims from developing their countries.
"One of the main goals of this ferocious campaign against Islam and its sanctities is to distract Muslims from achieving the Islamic civilizational project to rid the Muslim nation of its subordination to the West," the International Union for Muslim Scholars said in a statement, a copy of which was sent to IslamOnline.net.
The Dublin-based IUMS lashed out at a new video aired by Denmark's TV2 channel, showing members of the extreme-right Danish People's Party portraying Prophet Muhammad as a beer-drinking camel and a drunken terrorist attacking Copenhagen.
It said the footage and the 12 anti-Prophet caricatures published last year by Denmark's mass-circulation daily Jyllands Posten prove a drudge against Islam and Muslims.
Expecting more anti-Islam insults, the Muslim scholars said the best way to respond is to "pay no heed at all to the ignorant."
They cited a verse from the Qur'an that reads: "And when they hear vanity they withdraw from it and say: Unto us our works and unto you your works. Peace be unto you! We desire not the ignorant." (Al-Qassas — 55)
Leaders of the Muslim minority in Denmark, around three percent of the population, said Saturday they will not be provoked by such a "childish manner," but will take an astute action against the insult by the anti-immigrant party.
Pope Benedict XVI triggered an international controversy last month by linking Islam with violence by quoting a Byzantine emperor at a lecture in his native Germany.
Mixed Blessing
The Union said such insults, which neither hurt the Prophet nor undermine the love Muslims have for him, are a mixed blessing as they drive non-Muslims to know what Islam is all about.
Following the Danish cartoon crisis, many Muslim minorities around the world championed local know-prophet campaigns introducing Prophet Muhammad and Islam to their non-Muslim countrymen.
The IUMS, nonetheless, renewed a call to boycott Denmark, economically and culturally, building on the successful economic boycott to the Scandinavian country in the wake of the cartoons controversy.
It also urged Muslim political parties and movements worldwide to boycott the DPP and called on Danish Muslims, in particular, to shun and vote down the party in any parliamentary or municipal elections.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Sunday, October 8, condemned the new offensive footage.
The IUMS urged Muslim governments anew to live up to their responsibilities and take firm political stances against any insult to the Prophet or Islam.
"They should not give up raising the issue of insulting religions at the UN General Assembly and other international organizations in order to have an international resolution prohibiting and criminalizing blasphemy."
The IUMS further called for striking agreements with different countries, banning blasphemy reciprocally.
After the carton crisis, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Arab League, the Muslim world's two main political bodies, sought a UN resolution, backed by possible sanctions, to protect religions.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-10/09/04.shtml
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