Dansk Industri

Dansk Industri has published an open letter to Jyllands-Posten about the prophet Muhammed cartoons.

Jyllands-Posten has published 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammed in fall. Since this newspaper has a huge circulation in the Islamic world, all the 1.3 billion of world's Muslims saw the cartoons in their morning paper and got mightily offended. Hilarity ensued, and also death threats, demands that Danish government (who rightfully told them to bugger off) do something about the problem, boycotts of Danish products, and lately also threats to Danish citizens who have nothing to do with Jyllands-Posten. According to Helsingin Sanomat, Islamic Jihad demanded that that all Danes, Swedes and Norwegians leave Gaza within 2 days. Why Swedes and Norwegians? Beats me, I guess Islamic Jihad had problem fitting Geography in somewhere between Bomb Design and Holocaust Denial on their terrorist training schedules. Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, being clearly more secular, more liberal and more educated than Islamic Jihad, only demanded that Danes and Swedes leave, and gave them three days.

"Obviously, Danish companies are in no way direct parties in the dispute between Jyllands-Posten and religious leaders. Nevertheless, companies have experienced a number of repercussions in the Arab World during the past week: boycotting of their products, cancellations of sales and project meetings, lost orders etc. Furthermore, the personal safety of their employees is now also at stake. In this way, Danish companies and their employees are paying for the unsolved dispute between the newspaper and religious groups."

Interesting. And here I thought they were paying for the decision to do business in a certain type of countries. I mean, doing business in places populated by the aggressive, the fanatical and the insane has its risks and its price, and they are paying it now. Or did they imagine they were dealing with civilized countries? Or course they didn't, as evidenced by the fact that the letter is addressed to Jyllands-Posten and not to the freaks who are demanding that all Danes leave Gaza now.

"Our freedom of expression does not make us unaccountable for our actions. Accepting its responsibility in this respect, Jyllands-Posten now has to show whether it has any sympathy and respect for the people whose feelings have been hurt by the publishing of the drawings."

Sure thing. The kind of folks whose feelings get so hurt by the fact that a newspaper printed drawings of their prophet in spite of the religious prohibition against doing so that they start threatening the newspaper, the cartoonists, the government of the country where the paper is published, the other citizens of the country, and the citizens of two neighboring countries - aren't these just the kind of people who immediately elicit your sympathy and respect? Hmm, I have a feeling that my well of sympathy and respect is bit shallow here. I would even say, dry.

I pretty much feel like quoting Fred Reed here: "contempt is the proper reaction to the contemptible".