We are alternating our Muslim cartoon rage posts between Pave and E-Nough! (also here).

Hapless France Soir. Its Web link is fa-caa-caa, its managing editor was fired for his trouble, and the news office had a bomb scare.

The MRAP (Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l'Amitié entre les Peuples / Movement against Racism and for Niceness between Peoples)* announces plans to sue France Soir for publication of the particular cartoon showing Mr. Mohammed (PBUH) coiffé d'une bombe. "Cette caricature dont l'intention manifeste est de provoquer , blesser, humilier, stigmatiser, participe délibérément à l'amalgame raciste entre musulmans et terroristes."

Yes, well, forgive our confusion. That would be because so many terrorists are not just avowed Muslims, they insist they are compelled to acts of terror by Islam, that they are terrorists by virtue of their religion.

Headline: MOHAMMED STRESSED BY FUNDAMENTALISTS
Balloon: It's Hard Being Loved By Idiots**...

DISCLAIMER: The above cartoon has covered its face, therefore within the allowable (halal) depictions of Mr. Mohammed (PBUH). Cartoons, even well-drawn cartoons, which is not the case in any of these publications, are not proper objects of worship. Worship responsibly. Please refrain from idolatry.

Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly, published the Mohammed cartoons after beating back Muslim legal challenges to publication.

Several Muslim organisations, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith and the mosques of Paris and Lyon, had initiated court proceedings against Charlie Hebdo for alleged "racial and religious insult". They asked a Paris court to stop the weekly's publication and its accompanying advertising campaign. But the court yesterday rejected their demands on a technicality...

Sales were brisk.

PARIS February 9, 2006 (IHT) - In a measure of how much interest the affair has sparked in France, the newspaper sold all 160,000 issues within hours of hitting newsstands on Wednesday. Charlie Hebdo announced later in the day that it would print another 150,000 copies.***

The same day the Charlie Hebdo edition was published Jack came out and said exactly the wrong thing.

CHIRAC SLAMS MEDIA 'PROVOCATION' IN PRINTING MOHAMMED CARTOONS

PARIS February 8, 2006 (AFP) - "Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility," Chirac told his cabinet, according to a government spokesman. "I condemn all manifest provocation that might dangerously fan passions."

This from the man who cringes when his wife suggests grace at the dinner table.

Jack promotes here whatever faintingly sensitive Muslims say offends them as a reasonable test for incitement rather than any program or actions called for by the cartoon publishers. The publishers have called for debate. None have called for burning flags, effigies, or embassies, or protests of any kind. By Jack's delicate standard football matches, his own government's recent invocation of emergency powers, and all excitable political debate would be disallowed. Not surprisingly, Jack looks to the strength of the street to take the measure of the rule of law.

The wind-blown EU is considering a mush code for media "self-regulation":

EU COMMISSIONER URGES EUROPEAN PRESS CODE ON RELIGION

BRUXELLES February 9, 2006 (Telegraph) - Franco Frattini, the European Union commissioner for justice, freedom and security, revealed the idea for a code of conduct in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. Mr Frattini, a former Italian foreign minister, said the EU faced the "very real problem" of trying to reconcile "two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion".

Millions of European Muslims felt "humiliated" by the publication of cartoons of Mohammed, he added, calling on journalists and media chiefs to accept that "the exercising of a right is always the assumption of a responsibility". He appealed to European media to agree to "self-regulate".

The code of conduct, as envisaged by Mr Frattini, would acknowledge the importance of respecting religious sensibilities but would not offer a "privileged" status to any one faith.

Sr. Frattini suggests that the press has been irresponsible. Yet no one tub-thumped for such code during the whole of JPII's pontificate when the liberal European press frequently ridiculed him and made the religious doctrines and practices he espoused objects of fun. Why? Well, for one thing Catholics did not run riot, threaten mayhem, or call for the deaths of publishers, more generally the destruction of the publishers' homelands, or more grandly still the extinction of the publishers' homelands' social order.

Clearly the EU is not acting on a principle of religious respect. It is acting on a principle of fear. More specifically a fear of Muslim wrath. The EU, indifferent when not hostile to its own Christian religious heritage, has newly discovered a respect for "religious sensibilities" by way of Muslim displeasure. This we contend is very much a "privileged" status for Islam.

Accepting such self-regulation would send an important political message to the Muslim world, Mr Frattini said.

By agreeing to a charter "the press will give the Muslim world the message: we are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression, we can and we are ready to self-regulate that right", he said.

The European Commission has long had ambitions to introduce EU-wide legislation on fighting racism and xenophobia but has seen them founder amid resistance from national governments.

Mr Frattini said he was keen to move ahead with a voluntary code of conduct, to be drawn up by European media outlets with the assistance of the commission. The code would not have the status of an EU legal instrument and would not be enforceable by Union institutions.

Assume such a code has come about, an unenforceable code of pretty pieties. What in it would compel France Soir and Charlie Hebdo to publish differently? The French editors think they have been responsible to the principle of a free press. Will self-regulating editors obtain a Muslim imprimatur before they publish?

The normal drift of tyranny is for a government to appropriate powers to itself. Curiously, the EU and Sr. Frattini seem ready to do the hard work of tyranny for the caliphate.

[All emphases added.]

* Among MRAP's many niceness promotions are rallying to free Mumia Abu Jamal, honorary citizen of Paris and convicted copkiller, and Leonard Peltier, an American indian activist convicted of the execution-style murders of two FBI Agents.

*** Average edition circulation: 100,000.

PFFT (What is this?): Bearding Mohammed 2 | Rayonnement français 1

Thanks for all your hard work Damian! I could glean the major media outlets all day long and not get as much info as I do here at your site. Keep up the good fight!

Think you're a bit wrong about Christians not running riot when their religion is being mocked- I would remind you of what happened when the artwork called "Piss Christ" was shown in a museum in the States- Baptists went on a multi state firebombing raid and....oh, uh.... oops. Never mind.

But one can't forget when a museum in NYC (believe it was Brooklyn) showed artwork depicting the Virgin Mary flecked with Elephant Dung... the Hudson River ran red with the blood of the unbelievers and....oh, that's right- didn't happen. Instead, Rudy Giuliani- the mayor of NYC at the time- was roundly criticized for not wanting to use gov't monies to finance this "art".

In the current instance, I hope Mr. Fratinni is at least got a good dinner before jettisoning one of the basic precepts of enlightened Western civilization. What a quisling.