Failing to Find Comedy in the Muslim World

Brian Doherty | January 30, 2006

A roadside bomb attack on a joint Danish-Iraqi patrol near Basra; Danish flags burned in West Bank protests; masked gunmen in Gaza take over a European Union office; Libya shuts down its Danish embassy; Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa are reported to have warned all Scandanavians to get the hell out of Palestinian territory, posthaste; what ties together all these developments of the past few days is...a series of cartoons in a Danish publication, Jyllands-Posten, thought to be insulting to the Prophet Mohammad, including one showing his turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse.

Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter site has a great link roundup on details of this simultaneously absurd and horrifying story, still unfolding.

Reason has been on top of this story for a while; see this Bruce Bawer article from November on how Europeans have failed to stand up to radical Islam (although the Jyllands-Posten is singled out for their heroic refusal to buckle under to threats).