Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Westergaard Speaks Out

Kurt Westergaard, the Danish artist who drew the most famous of the Motoons, expresses his opinion about Random House in his latest interview, this one from Berlingske Tidende.

Our Danish correspondent TB has kindly translated it into English:

Kurt Westergaard criticizes publishing firm

The cartoonist Kurt Westergaard criticizes an American publisher that cancelled a novel about the youngest wife of the prophet Mohammed.

The publication in the USA of a novel about the prophet Mohammed’s child wife Aisha has been cancelled out of fear of what militants might do. The artist from Jyllands-Posten, Kurt Westergaard, calls it ‘a slippery slope’ — especially because it is the big publisher Random House which, out of fear of violent reactions, has halted publication.
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“Unfortunately it is now one of the biggest publishers which is bending, and this does not sound very promising. When they do not take risks, a lot of the smaller ones probably do not either. It is the big publishers who should be walking in front,” says Westergaard.

The Jewel of Medina is about the child bride of Mohammed, Aisha. But the publisher Random House released the writer from her contract in as a result of consultations about the book. The publisher is afraid that the publication will offend groups in Muslim society and incite violence among small, radical segments. But the good advice from the experts annoys Kurt Westergaard.

“The fanatics have already won when we retreat. So it really is sad,” says the Danish artist, who made one of the drawings of Mohammed that led to violent protests in many Muslim countries.

7 comments:

Proud Infidel said...

Mr. Westeegard is absolutely correct. To be fair, Random isn't the first to back down over the fear Islamic violence, it's become a trend which is even more disturbing. The so called media elites are well on their way to dhimmitude. They are censoring even before they are threatened with violence!

dienw said...

I gave up a National Review subscription a couple years ago when the editors - post Buckley - caved to the dar al-Islam. I will make sure not to purchase any Craven House books.

dienw said...

I finally found two good terms for the "elites" that are preferable to using "hot s**t on a stick": the terms even demonstrate an Obamanian savoir faire for bilingualism:

1. les haute narines: the high nostrils;
2. les morves: the snots;

pleas use in preference to "elites."

Zenster said...

“The fanatics have already won when we retreat. So it really is sad,” says the Danish artist

As someone whose life is on the line, Westergaard has the moral authority to condemn these craven cowards. He is absolutely right in that Muslims are dependent upon appearances to an inordinate degree. There is so little of substance to Islam that it relies upon the smoke and mirrors of deceit and partial truths (i.e., taqiyya and kitman).

Giving ground without a fight merely emboldens Muslims and encourages further Islamic aggression. Allowing such predation upon our basic rights without any prior dispute grants de facto validity to Islam where absolutely none is due.

This, in turn, empowers Muslims with yet another unearned victory that bolsters their delusions of adequacy. At some point this sort of voluntary pre-emptive appeasement will need to identified for the treason it is. Those engaging it are worthy of the same scorn that Islam itself commands.

Hesperado said...

Even Westergaard subscribes to the PC MC paradigm about the problem of Islam, as he has made more than one remark about the supposedly small minority of "extremists" contrasted with the vast majority of putatively harmless Muslims. In this respect, Westergaard's mindset is not all that different from that of the author of Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones, who says she "respects" Mohammed and never meant to hurt the precious feelings of Muslims. Or if Westergaard is different from her, it reflects only a quantitative difference -- slightly further along on the asymptotic scale -- but not a qualitative difference born of the epiphany that Islam itself is extremist and so too are all Muslims who actively support it and who passively enable it (and all gradations in between).

Those of us who have had the aforementioned epiphany also have become convinced that the combined subpopulations of

1) Muslims who are so lax they are not even passively enabling Islam

and

2) Muslims who are actually moderate (against Sharia, willing to criticize the Koran and Hadiths and Islamic history)

are what amount to a "tiny minority" among worldwide Muslims. It is the vast majority who are dangerous, to one degree or another.

Furthermore,

3) even this tiny minority of harmless Muslims are, for practical purposes, not sufficiently distinguishable from the dangerous ones.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Earlier this summer I heard Lars Vilks, the artist behind the mohammeddogs on local tv also taking a pc stance towards islam. I don't remember his words exactly but it was definetively pc.

Profitsbeard said...

Islam is a subversive, anti-Constitutional, anti-Universal Declaration of Human Rights imperialistic, intolerant, misogynistic movement dedicated to establishing a global theocratic tyranny.

Pussyfooting around its rotten ideological core only encourages it to metastasize.

The Koran is the Mein Kampf of a Dark Ages pedophile warlord.

Nothing good is going to grown from such a poisonous seed.

Time to stop tapdancing and start snap-kicking