Taqiyya: WikiLeaked Docs Reveal Syria’s Role in the Cartoon Riots
I’m on the record as not being a fan of Julian Assange or WikiLeaks. However, we are learning some useful things from his disclosures. For instance, a State Department cable from August 2006 reveals the duplicitous role that the Syrian government played during the infamous Danish cartoon riots of that year. Remember them? Worldwide riots erupted on the famed Islamic street, which by the evidence includes much of Europe now, in response to a Danish newspaper publishing cartoons depicting Mohammad in various unflattering ways. Here’s a movie that I produced at the time to show how the riots started, who started them, and why.
The cartoon riots were a trick, perpetrated by unscrupulous imams and their backers, for the purpose of intimidating the West into adapting Islamist codes of speech policing, and for the purpose of generating fear and loathing of the West up and down that fabled Islamic street. It all worked quite well, thanks in no small part to the Western media’s cowardly behavior throughout.
Now, to the incriminating doc concerning Syria. At the time of the riots, it was fairly obvious that various and sundry despots around the Middle East were using the Danish cartoon controversy for their own ends. Syria’s hands were bloody, as they tend to be in any crisis. In this WikiLeaked doc, “SARG” refers to the Syrian government:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx one of the most influential Sunni religious figures in Damascus, provided PolChief February 6 with his assessment of SARG involvement in the run-up to the violent February 4 demonstrations (and its reaction in their aftermath). He noted that PM Naji al-Otri several days before the demonstrations instructed the Grand Mufti Sheikh Hassoun to issue a strongly worded directive to the imams delivering Friday sermons in the mosques of Damascus, without setting any ceilings on the type of language to be used. Hasson complied with the order.
“No ceiling” on the rhetoric is as it sounds — the prime minister of Syria, Muhammad Naji al-Otari of the ruling Ba’ath Party, unleashed the top mufti to jump ugly on the cartoons, and the mufti did his part. With joy, no doubt. And riots, predictably, ensued, with a little help from the mufti’s friend:
(C) xxxxxxx noted that one of the key organizers of the march was Ammar Sahloul, a wealthy businessman (money trader) with close ties both to the regime and to the Grand Mufti. xxxxxxxx suspects him of being an agent for the SARG. He said that Sahloul had been one of the people involved in sending out text messages a few days before the demonstrations, inviting people to come.
How very Soros — it was an astroturf riot bought and paid for by a rich, connected man who is close to power.
As these things sometimes go, the Syrian cartoon riots threatened to get a bit out of hand. So the Assad gang stepped in to put a lid on it:
C) After the Danish Embassy was attacked (along with the Swedish and Chilean missions housed in the same building) and the Norwegian Embassy was torched, Syrian security officers acted much more resolutely to prevent damage at the French Embassy. Sheikh xxxxx friend Ayoubi, the Minister of the Awqaaf, was on the scene trying to calm the demonstrators and get them to disperse. Ayoubi told xxxxxxx that the senior Syrian security officer then informed him “Thats it. Tell them to disperse or we will use live ammunition” to stop the rioting and to prevent them from storming the Embassy.
Here’s where the real taqiyya comes into play:
(C) xxxxxxx assessed that the SARG allowed the rioting to continue for an extended period and then, when it felt that “the message had been delivered,” it reacted with serious threats of force to stop it. He described the message to the U.S. and the broader international community as follows: “This is what you will have if we allow true democracy and allow Islamists to rule.” To the Islamic street all over the region, the message was that the SARG is protecting the dignity of Islam, and that the SARG is allowing Muslims freedom on the streets of Damascus they are not allowed on the streets of Cairo, Amman, or Tunis.
Notice the dual messages. To the West, the riots were orchestrated and intended to send the West a message: Leave us despots alone or you’ll get nothing but chaos. The Syrian Ba’ath Party had every incentive to send that particular message to a United States that had just toppled the neighboring Ba’ath dictatorship in Iraq. Assad didn’t want to end up like Saddam. To those who embodied the chaos, the rioters themselves, Assad sent a different message: We, the secular Syrian government, are your guardians from those nasties in the West. Trust us to keep Islam pure.
For what it’s worth, the Ba’ath Party has long played this dual role – secular national socialists on the one hand, guardians of Islam on the other – and that relationship goes back to a previous Grand Mufti, a previous incarnation of national socialism, and a terrorist who fooled lots of Westerners into thinking he was a man of peace. His name was Arafat. But I digress.
That dual channel communication above was by no means the end of Syria’s duplicity in the matter, as the cable makes clear:
(C) The Danish Ambassador told Emboffs February 6 that he had met with the Minister of the Awqaaf on February 2 (and separately with the Grand Mufti) to explain the Danish position and ask for help in cooling tempers. He noted that the while the Mufti issued a helpful statement, the ministers reported comments on Friday in a mosque in the upscale Malki neighborhood only served to inflame the situation.
Taqiyya!
The entire Danish cartoons episode, for which the cartoonists themselves continue to live in hiding for fear of meeting with Theo Van Gogh’s fate, was orchestrated from beginning to end, and on the ground in police states like Syria. It’s one thing to suspect all this, as I and many many others did at the time, but quite another to see it confirmed, and now leaked to the world.
we are at war with islam. unfortunately there is a traitor in the white house.
In walked the village idiot and his face is all aglow…….. he’s been up all night listening to mohammed’s radio……..
Well, at least islam is at war with us. . . .whether are leaders admit to it or not.
The Islamic puppeteers who stage managed the cartoon riots learned their handicraft at the bloodied knees of Arafat- the godfather of modern Arab terrorism.
In fact, he managed to orchestrate the biggest, anti-semitic blood libel in recent decades to span the globe-the Al-Dura blood libel.
If not for Dr Landes, Philip Karsenty and the creation of ‘Polliwood’, the world would still believe that the crouching little boy, during the orchestrated 2000 intifada, really died.
Taqiyya IS their truth, and our western elitists buy it hook, line and sinker.
The useful idiots will doom us all.
Oh, just ignore them. “Moderate” Muslims will speak up as they always do, and the “radicals” will soon go away and leave us alone.
Either you have principles or you DON’T! If you are working with tyrants, sending money to terrorists that believe “Freedom go go HELL”, or refusing to SPREAD FREEDOM, the politicians will easily make some excuse to continue to do BUSINESS. Support with loudspeakers in the street the U.S. Constitutions First Amendment and Article 1, section 2 (vote the tax man EVERY two years) or…generate your own dollars. The American taxpayer is sick and tired of supporting people that don’t believe in freedom. May your vista be glass!
If your finding Mr. Assange useful then I think maybe you are a fan. C’mon, he’s like Derrick in “Our Man Flint” except he’s surrounded with women who want to serve him with a subpoena. They’re cute though.
The entire Danish cartoons episode, for which the cartoonists themselves continue to live in hiding for fear of meeting with Theo Van Gogh’s fate, was orchestrated from beginning to end…
I’ve been saying this for the duration, especially in light of the fact that the Danish imam who was instrumental in distributing the cartoons around the middle east did so some number of months after they had appeared in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.
Also, reportedly, this imam showed some highly vulgar cartoons that hadn’t been published, to further intentionally rile up the masses.
Of course in the spirit of taqiyya, Islam is allowed to do any old false and manipulative thing to bring the legitimate word of Allah to the forefront. What a crock.
While the infidel is so easily duped, so easily made to feel “guilty”, especially the infidel in western countries who is swimming around in some weird version of political correctness.
There is no independent, spontaneous protest or uprising in the Middle east, the people are dirt poor without knowing where there next meal is coming from.
All the “protests” are State funded, State supported, State ORDERED affairs, even in “stateless” areas like the west bsnk and gaza…..there are Operatives with Syria, Iran, Saudi connections and bankrolls making EVERYTHING happen….
Here is a simple test:
When the next local Durka Durka gets greased crawling under the barbed wire with a bomb, or the local Gaza Rocketeering Club has their clubhouse vaporized, whatch the funerals….
People with NO FLUSH TOILETS suddenly have access to a functioning 24 hour Kinko’s, Office Max, or Staples, with which to produce 10 FOOT TALL COLOR POSTERS OF THE MARTYRS, within HOURS of the smoke clearing?
With NO STATE AGENCY SPONSORING?
Yeah, I belive that.
And the beat goes on.
Morons still on the move over the ‘toons.
Five arrested over Danish cartoon terror plot
Of course the ‘morons are still on the move’. The fatwa against the cartoonists and the Jylands Posten paper has not been rescinded, so the beat goes on.
Why?????
Do what ever, why this whole envy to muslims
is it because they have a real religion
is it because they have a holy book(Qura’an)that never been changes since 1400 year
is because they know what is the real meaning of family????
I dont know???????????
I am shocked. How can this be? The lame-stream press (Pravda America), Barry Hussein Soetoro, the progressives in Congress, and every other socialist in the galaxy have been telling everyone for decades how peaceful Islam is. What happened? I do have one suggestion for the Seattle cartoonist that was forced into hiding. Whatever you do Sir, don’t let anyone from Comedy Central be part of the security team protecting you. You do want to stay alive, dont you?
Islam Expert Not Shocked by Disappearance of ‘Draw Muhammad’ Cartoonist
By Michelle A. Vu|Christian Post Reporter
A Christian expert on Islam is not surprised that the Seattle cartoonist behind “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!” was threatened by extremists and forced into hiding.In fact, Dr. William Wagner, author of “How Islam Plans to Change the World,” says intimidation is one of radical Islam’s most effective tools.
“They (radical Muslims) are constantly looking for persons who seem to go against Islam and then threaten them,” says Wagner, a long-time Southern Baptist who currently serves as president of Olivet University in San Francisco.
Extremists used the same tactic to keep newspapers from republishing the Danish cartoons in 2006 and to force Comedy Central into censoring a “South Park” episode with the Muslim prophet Muhammad earlier this year.
“These threats will continue not because of an increased number of those opposing Islam but because they have discovered that it is a good method to put the opposition on their heels and at the same time to give more media attention to their goals,” says Wagner.
Last Wednesday, Seattle Weekly editor-in-chief Mark Fefer announced in the paper that cartoonist Molly Norris was in hiding because of death threats received for mocking the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Based on the advice of the FBI, Norris will relocate, change her name and no longer appear in the paper, Fefer wrote.
“You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly,” he explained. “She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program – except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.”
A cleric in Yemen associated with al-Qaeda, Anwar Al-Awlaki, had issued a fatwa (religious ruling) against Norris that appeared in the July issue of an al-Qaeda-linked magazine. For most Muslims, it is blasphemous to depict their prophet.
Ironically, however, Norris’ cartoon for “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” did not depict the Muhammad. Her cartoon featured colorful objects, including tea cups, handbag, and spools of thread, under the headline: “Will the real likeness of the prophet Mohammed please stand up?!”
Her cartoon was much gentler than the images that her “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” inspired on a Facebook page, which contained many offensive cartoons. The Facebook page with the Muhammad images even caused Pakistan to temporarily ban the social networking site.
Norris had originally started the annual day to protest Comedy Central’s censor of “South Park” after a Muslim group threatened violence. The 49-year-old cartoonist wanted to protest the network to defend free speech instead of bowing to their threats.
According to a Zogby survey, 71 percent of American adults also disagreed with the network’s censorship of the 201st episode of “South Park.”
“The Seattle cartoonist who dared to suggest making fun of Muhammad is experiencing what many others have gone through who have spoken against Islam,” says Wagner, who served as a missionary for nearly three decades.
“Since radical Muslims have discovered that such publicity works for their advantage, they are using this effectively worldwide to get their way in both large and small incidents,” he adds.
In 2006, a series of Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad caused protests and riots throughout the world, particularly in cities with large Muslim population. One of the 12 cartoons originally published in the Jullands-Posten in 2005 depicted the Muslim prophet wearing a bomb as a turban with a lit fuse.
Although the cartoons did not stir any strong reaction immediately after their initial publication, they did a few months later when they were reprinted in several other European newspapers.
Dozens of people died as a result of Muhammad cartoon protests, including those in Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan. Churches in Lebanon and Nigeria were also attacked during the riots.