Now we have to watch Islamic "rage" break out over supposedly "blasphemous" newspaper cartoons in Denmark. The latest: Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus burned out.
Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday — the most violent in days of furious protests by Muslims in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.The demonstrations in Damascus began peacefully with protesters gathering outside the building housing the Danish Embassy. But they began throwing stones and eventually broke through police barricades. Some scrambled up concrete barriers protecting the embassy, climbed into the building and set a fire.
"With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!" the demonstrators chanted. Some removed the Danish flag and replaced it with a green flag printed with the words: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God."
Demonstrators moved onto the Norwegian Embassy about 4 miles away, also setting fire to it before being dispersed by police using tear gas and water cannons. Hundreds of police and troops barricaded the road leading to the French Embassy, but protesters were able to break through briefly before fleeing from the force of water cannons.
Point of order: no one seems to remember, or care, that the state-controlled media outlets in numerous Arab countries routinely run villainously bigoted "cartoons" attacking Jews and Americans.
Also note: Syria is a dictatorship. Water cannons aside, no crowds of "demonstrators" are going to assemble by the thousands, much less assault two Western embassies, without government approval or, more probably, instigation.
Michelle Malkin has much, much more.
UPDATE: Austin Bay says it exactly.
These attacks would not be possible without the tacit permission or connivance (or both) of the Syrian government. At the moment Syria is facing UN censure for its role in the murder of Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri....Thousands enraged, huh? More likely scenario: the dictatorship is using The Cartoon War as a convenient issue to deflect the anti-regime heat building inside Syria and shift media focus from the murder investigation.
UPDATE: Evan Kohlman at The Counterterrorism Blog considers the strategic implications for Europe and the West.
[T]he uproar over the Danish cartoons is merely the latest eruption of growing tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims across the European continent. Eventually, it seems all but certain that these ongoing tensions will manifest themselves into further acts of terrorist violence. Anyone who remains skeptical of this serious threat to the political stability of Europe should come and listen to extremist British Muslims gleefully express their desire to "spread blood in the streets of England" in "another 7/7"--precisely as they did today in front of hundreds of police and other onlookers. There can be no clearer warning to the Western world.
UPDATE: Melanie Phillips in Great Britain is crystal-clear about what it means.
[T]he cartoon jihad has made one thing crystal clear. No more alibis. The roots of global terror do not lie in Iraq, nor in Israel/Palestine, nor in Chechnya, Kashmir or any of the other iconic conflicts which are said to be its cause. They lie instead in the Islamists’ rage that their religious culture is not in power across the world, their determination to subordinate that world to its tenets and their truly pathological belief that it is they who are under attack if their victims dare defend themselves. Twelve scribbled drawings have lifted the veil -- on both the nature of the threat and the disarray that greets it.Posted by Alan at February 4, 2006 12:15 PM