Thursday, December 30, 2010

Terrorist plan to slaughter newspaper staff is thwarted by Danish Security Services, another plot foiled before innocent people could be killed













Dear All

Most people accept that freedom of speech is essential in a democracy and should be vigorously protected by the State of any country that considers itself liberal in nature.

Five Muslim men have been arrested for planning to shoot as many people as possible at the office of a Danish newspaper.

This is the newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

In publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, the newspaper showed bad taste and bad judgement.

However they were legally within their rights to do so.

The cartoons provoked massive and violent protests in 2006 in Muslim countries where demonstrators said the drawings as having profoundly insulted Islam and shortly afterwards death threats were issued.

There are ways of making your point without restoring to murder.

Is it acceptable to kill someone for drawing a cartoon?

No.

This is an example of people using a cause as an excuse to justify murder, the people arrested are criminals.

Denmark's intelligence service arrested four men in two raids in suburbs of Copenhagen.

During the raids an automatic weapon, a silencer and ammunition were recovered.

Swedish police said they also arrested a 37-year-old Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin living in Stockholm.

Jakob Scharf, head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, or PET said:

"An imminent terror attack has been foiled."

Some of the suspects have been described as "militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks."

Zubair Butt Hussain, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Denmark called the murder plan "extremely worrying."

He added his organisation "absolutely condemns any act of terrorism regardless of the motives and motivations that may lie behind."

The four men face preliminary charges of attempting to carry out an act of terrorism. This isn’t the first time that there have been plots against the news paper Jyllands-Posten or Kurt Westergaard, the artist who drew the most contentious of 12 cartoons.

There have been four.

Kurt Westergaard said:

"The foiled plot is a direct attack on democracy and freedom of press. We may not and won't let anyone forbid us to criticise radical Islamism."

In January, a Somali man broke into Westergaard's home wielding an axe and a knife; Westergaard escaped by using a safe-room within his house.

2008, two Tunisians with Danish residence permits were arrested for plotting to kill him.

September, a man was wounded when a letter bomb he was preparing exploded in a Copenhagen hotel as it was being prepared for the newspaper.

These people should get long prison sentences and deportation for life from the European Union.

When PC culture was introduced by the political classes is was a tool to silence dissent and marginalise people.

In the immigration debate, it quickly became polarised, branding people, by sticking the racist tag on them.

Mainstream parties went out of their way court sections of the community as they saw groups like the Muslim community as potential large ‘vote caches’.

To that end we had campaigns such as ‘One Scotland Many Cultures’, this can be found here.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2007/01/26113250

What that campaign should have said was ‘One Scotland, One Culture; Many Religions’.

The Scottish Government campaign was to tackle racism and discrimination but it was a signpost that highlighted how communities had segregated instead of integrated.

All over Europe we have seen political leaders speak out of the failure of the multicultural experiment.

Failure is due to political fear and short term thinking but there are good people to highlight in our Muslim Community.

Mr. Assader Ali.

He is a restaurateur in Edinburgh who to me is signifies what One Scotland, One Culture; Many Religions’ means.

Assader is a Muslim Chef who does not celebrate Christmas but he decided to shut up shop and taking his curries around the city to feed the homeless.

He and his staff cooked up a massive batch of turkey jalfrezi and off they went to help people.

Regardless what religion someone is, one culture, promotes shared values which everyone should have and aspire too.

For me my Scot of the Year is Mr. Assader Ali for highlighting a message I continually blog on, the importance of community, something everyone should fight to protect.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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