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1. februar 2006
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Two positive surprises today. First, Egypt encourages Hamas to recognise Israel and disarm.
Two top Egyptian officials called on Hamas to recognize Israel, disarm and honor past peace deals Wednesday, the latest sign Arab governments are pushing the militant group to moderate after its surprise election victory.
Separately, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official said that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has told Egyptian officials he would hold off on asking Hamas to form the next Palestinian government until Hamas renounces violence.
The latter sounds, I think, unlikely. But obviously, a new government has to abide by binding agreements made by the previous administration. Not that Hamas is big on international law.
Second, WaPo columnist David Ignatius points out the realignment between Washington and Paris, and that the the cooperation between the US and France is now closer than in many, many years.
Once every five or six weeks, a French presidential adviser named Maurice Gourdault-Montagne flies to Washington to meet with his American counterpart, national security adviser Stephen Hadley. They spend several hours coordinating strategy on Iran, Syria, Lebanon and other hot spots, and then the Frenchman flies home. In between trips, the two men talk often on the phone, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Welcome to the French Connection. Though the link between the top foreign policy advisers of Presidents Bush and Jacques Chirac is almost unknown to the outside world, it has emerged as an important element of U.S. planning. On a public level, France may still be the butt of jokes among American politicians, but in these private diplomatic contacts, the Elysee Palace has become one of the White House's most important and effective allies.
Read on.
Of course, if Bush is too much of an unilateralist, he is condemned for that, if he goes the multilateralist route, that is wrong, too.
8:30:11 PM 
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Muslems are violently opposed to any depiction of the prophet, or so the story goes these days. It is, however, a truth with some modifications. Especially in the Shia tradition, there exists quite a bit of artwork of Mohammad, most often without his face showing, but sometimes, as you can see above, artists showed his face. The above is taken from Basil Gray's Treasures of Persian Painting (1961).
Western researchers have actually been able to buy small paintings, often compared to Orthodox Christian icons, on the streets in Tehran in modern days.
The above picture, and the argument, is shamelessly stolen from Norwegian blogger Øyvind Strømmen.
PS: The University of Bergen, where I studied precisely the topic of comparative religion, has removed a webpage with modern Islamic art after bloggers and media pointed out its existence. From Dagbladet, where you can see a facsmile. Communication director Torny Aarbakke says the this was done because they the university feared for the safety of its students and staff.
As of now, the pages, but not the pictures, are available on the Google cache. These artworks were, as I wrote above, bought in the last few years in various Islamic countries, including Egypt and Iran, from pious Muslims.
Good heavens!
6:32:33 PM
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The French newspaper France Soir has decided to run the Danish Mohammad cartoons, and also one of their own.
Police said they had won a pledge from Denmark's imams to work to prevent an escalation of the row while the France Soir daily said it had published the cartoons in the name of freedom of expression and to fight religious intolerance.
"Because no religious dogma can impose its view on a democratic and secular society, France Soir publishes the incriminated cartoons," the paper said.
Under a headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God", the paper ran a front page cartoon with Buddha, the Christian and Jewish Gods and Prophet Muhammad sitting on a cloud above Earth, with the Christian God saying: "Don't complain Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here."
Can be expect "freedom fries" instead of "French fries" in the Middle East, now?
A German newspaper follows up:
The German Welt daily put one of the drawings on its front page on Wednesday, saying the picture was "harmless" and regretting that the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily had apologised for causing offense.
"Democracy is the institutionalised form of freedom of expression," the paper said in a front-page commentary.
"There is no right to protection from satire in the West; there is a right to blasphemy."
Given the name of my blog, I can hardly disagree with that!
If this spreads, it will be very difficult for Muslims to boycott all of these countries. What should they do; buy American instead?
Meanwhile, Danish Jyllands-Posten has experienced that the "apology" didn't help much:
The offices of the Danish newspaper that first published the caricatures, Jyllands-Posten, had to be evacuated on Tuesday because of a bomb threat.
PS: Via Winds of Change, a huge collection of paintings and cartoons of the prophet Mohammad, from medieval depictions, some Muslim, until today.
Update: France Soir owner Raymond Lakah has fired the editor for publishing the cartoons.
5:42:37 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.03.2006; 16:49:05.
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