Danish Muslims take page from CBS's playbook

photo credit: Bluto over at the Jawa Report


Were you perhaps wondering why the Mohammed cartoons raised such a hue and cry now? After all, they were published in September, so why now? I thought perhaps the delay was due to a translation difficulty, limited access to media, etc. Silly me. It wasn't that.

No, some Danish Imam decided they'd make a dandy pr campaign and set out to educate and enlighten (read infuriate and inflame) his fellow muslims. One problem: They added cartoons that never appeared in Jylands-Posten, the Danish paper that had the onions to publish the first series.
Here's a snippet:

Last November, Abu Laban, a 60-year-old Palestinian who had served as translator and assistant to top Gamaa Islamiya leader Talaal Fouad Qassimy during the mid-1990s and has been connected by Danish intelligence to other Islamists operating in the country, put together a delegation that traveled to the Middle East to discuss the issue of the cartoons with senior officials and prominent Islamic scholars. The delegation met with Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sunni Islam’s most influential scholar, Yusuf al Qaradawi. "We want to internationalize this issue so that the Danish government will realize that the cartoons were insulting, not only to Muslims in Denmark, but also to Muslims worldwide," said Abu Laban.

On its face, it would appear as if nothing were wrong. However, the Danish Muslim delegation showed much more than the 12 cartoons published by Jyllands Posten. In the booklet it presented during its tour of the Middle East, the delegation included other cartoons of Mohammed that were highly offensive, including one where the Prophet has a pig face. But these additional pictures were NOT published by the newspaper, but were completely fabricated by the delegation and inserted in the booklet...

Fake but accurate, indeed.
Lorenzo Vidino explains it all to you over at The Counterterrorism Blog.