The Ummah Condemns Lars Vilks

As one might expect, the Ummah is coming down like a ton of bricks on Lars Vilks for his blasphemous drawings of Roundabout Dogs.

The peculiar thing is that this issue is nearly three years old. Where have all the angry protests been in the meantime? Until the plotters were arrested in Ireland last week, the Modoggie Crisis had lain dormant for two years. In other words, the “Muslim street” was not enraged until a group of Muslim conspirators was arrested and prevented from murdering Lars Vilks. Presumably Muslims are now angry because the execution attempt failed.

Before reporting the latest Modoggie Madness from the MSM, I’d like to point out a few facts about Lars Vilks’ Art Project.

1.		Lars Vilks did not draw a cartoon of Mohammed as a dog. His images were line drawings, not cartoons. They were no more cartoons than was, say, Picasso’s drawing of Don Quixote.
2.		Lars Vilks did not draw a cartoon of Mohammed as a dog. The drawings were not of Mohammed. They were entitled Profeten som Rondellhund, “The Prophet as a Roundabout Dog”. Mr. Vilks was very explicit in the early interviews: the Rondellhund was a prophet, but the artist was not specifying which prophet. This particular prophet happened to have a beard and a turban, but that was neither here nor there.
3.		Lars Vilks did not draw a cartoon of Mohammed as a dog. The prophet in Mr. Vilks’ drawings was depicted as a “Roundabout Dog”, which is a peculiar Swedish folk custom in which a statue or figurine is placed in the middle of a traffic circle. Roundabout Dogs are usually made of wood or metal, and resemble real dogs to varying degrees. But they are not dogs. See our first post about Lars Vilks for a fuller account of Rondelhundarna.
4.		Lars Vilks did not draw a cartoon of Mohammed as a dog. But he did name his own dog “Mohammed”.

So when the MSM relates breathlessly that “the Swedish artist Lars Vilks drew a cartoon of Mohammed as a dog”, or refers to Lars Vilks as a “Mohammed cartoonist”, they are getting the story totally wrong. They have utterly failed in their understanding of the Art Project, which is not at all like the Danish Mohammed Cartoon Affair. This is a completely different animal, as it were.

Mr. Vilks was being fiendishly clever in his incitement to Islamophobia. No Mohammed; no dog. Yet the Ummah has risen up as one to strike him down!

This entire operation is part of the Art Project, and the furious reaction of the world’s 7.73 octillion Muslims is just as much a phase of the art work as were the drawings of the Rondellhundar — not to mention the abject cowardly behavior of various politicians, media people, and other elite Western dhimmis.

Lars Vilks always has a twinkle in his eye, and the Art Project was constructed with full awareness of how his little jape might well play out.

But remember: at the same time he is completely serious. When an interviewer asked him if freedom of expression — as represented by his Modoggies — was worth dying for, he said simply, “Yes.”

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Now we get down to the latest news about Modoggie Rage Syndrome, as reported in The Local. The most recent incident involves the furious reaction of Malaysia:

Malaysia Slams Sweden Over Cartoons

The Malaysian foreign minister has asked Sweden to take action against newspapers which reprinted a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog last week.

“Malaysia strongly denounces the reprinting of the caricature of Prophet Muhammad by three Swedish newspapers on 10 March 2010,” foreign minister Anifah Aman said in an unusually outspoken statement yesterday.

He said his country was concerned that such “despicable acts disregard the sensitivity of the Muslim world in the name of freedom of expression.”

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“Such irresponsible acts are provocative and offensive in nature and hence it is totally unacceptable,” he added.

“Malaysia wishes to request the Swedish government to take measures against such publications to prevent the recurrence of such irresponsible acts in the future.”

The country’s conservative Islamic party, PAS, announced plans to organize a demonstration and submit a formal letter of protest to the Swedish embassy over the re-printing of the caricature.

Sweden’s ambassador to Malaysia told the news agency TT that the demonstration is expected to happen at the end of the week, following Friday prayers.

The Malaysian foreign minister’s comments came at the end of a week which saw the arrest of seven people over an alleged plot to assassinate cartoonist Lars Vilks, who drew the caricature and who has a $100,000 bounty on his head from an Al-Qaeda-linked group. When the news of the plot broke, a number of Swedish newspapers reprinted the caricature, as a gesture of support for the cartoonist’s freedom of expression.

The original controversy started when a Swedish regional daily published Vilks’ satirical cartoon in 2007, prompting protests by local Muslims which later led to international protests. Egypt, Iran and Pakistan have all lodged formal complaints with the Swedish government.

Hat tip: TB.

For previous posts on Lars Vilks and the Roundabout Dogs, see the Modoggie Archives.