Danish, Western Websites Under Attack

caese writes "The BBC is reporting that almost 900 Danish websites have been defaced by crackers angry about the recent controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. From the article: 'What is extraordinary for this Danish case is the speed in which the community united'. Another 1600 or so Western websites have been defaced by the same group. The defacements have ranged from condemnation of the cartoons to outright calls for violence."

Comments

this has to stop

[slackaddict]

The muslim world HAS to learn to play nicely with the rest of the world or face becoming marginalized. There's only so many times people can read about young girls being gang raped to punish their brother or young girls being forced to stay inside a burning building because they don't have their headgear on... not to mention all of the totally innocent contractors, journalists and students that are murdered for doing their job or even going to school. Where are the women's rights groups?!?!? Where are the "peaceful" muslims?

"The speed with which the community united"

[Anonymous Coward]

The cartoons were published in September, protests happened in the last couple of weeks. Speed? Not much. What is more astonishing is the extent to which muslims have been shown to be prone to manipulation (on par or worse than the manipulation seen in the US post-9/11). I suppose that is the inherent power of mass religion, "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions."

bloggers...

[Anonymous Coward]

You find out the cartoons have already been circulating widely in the muslims world during height of ramadan in Oct 05. Next, you find out a Danish Immam invader added more cartoons to the bunch. Then you find out the Danes will head the security council in the near future. What makes it even more funny, is your own western papers ( not knowing the cartoons were circulated in the islamic world without riots ) then turn around and censor the cartoons to the american public -- out of multicultural sensitivity.

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The Ranting Sandmonkey, an Egyptian blog, illustrates just how bogus the MSM refusal to discuss the Danish cartoons "out of respect for Islam" is:

Freedom For Egyptians reminded me why the cartoons looked so familiar to me: they were actually printed in the Egyptian Newspaper Al Fagr back in October 2005. I repeat, October 2005, during Ramadan, for all the egyptian muslim population to see, and not a single squeak of outrage was present. Al Fagr isn't a small newspaper either: it has respectable circulation in Egypt, since it's helmed by known Journalist Adel Hamoudah. Looking around in my house I found the copy of the newspaper, so I decided to scan it and present to all of you to see.

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'The past as prologue'

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/

compare..

[Anonymous Coward]

..that to the way Hindus reacted when pictures of Hindu Gods were depicted on toilet seats (in UK), on footwear and on bikini wear! They had silent (non-violent) protests. Cowards? no, matured!

if it were a movie?

[FooAtWFU]

If it were about a movie, they'd track down the director, shoot him eight times, slit his throat, and stab him in the chest, leaving two knives in his chest, one of which pins down a five-page note threatening Western governments in general ... but that's just judging from past performances, and we all know how well those indicate future results.

You know, the usual.

Media

[kevin_conaway]

I wonder if the media has an agenda here?

See this comment made earlier today:

... The best way of manipulating the public is to supress your reasonable opponents and exaggerate the unreasonable opponents. It's a subtle variation on a straw-man argument. If the only people the public sees oppose you are lunatics, it makes it much easier for them to believe yours is the only reasonable course of action. ..

That particularly rung true to me because I like to digest information in quick hits. I like to check out the summaries of news items and if something is interesting, hear some commentary on it and dig a little deeper.

If all the headlines are "Muslims have taken hostages in..." or "A radical Islamic group exploded...", then people become conditioned to believe that Muslims and Islam are violent when they really aren't.

In a thread a while back, someone made a fantastic observation about Africa. The general premise was that most people still think that the entire continent of Africa is nothing more than corrupt leaders and starving children and this viewpoint was partly blamed on the media and mostly blamed on the influx and inundation of "Save the children" commericals in the 1990s.

Re:All I Can Say Is...

[smellsofbikes]

If a bunch of Christians in the US started burning down buildings (rather than just picketing films they find offensive, like they did for The Last Temptation Of Christ) they'd be treated like Eric Randolph has been: hunted down, arrested, lose their jobs, their houses... but when you're living in tarpaper shacks you don't have the money to purchase, in a society where other people can't afford to sue you for violating the civil rights they don't have anyway, what's to lose by burning down some buildings?

To put it another way, the single best way of pacifying a community is giving people something to lose. Nothing turns someone who doesn't think deeply into a peaceful person as quickly as possessions.