WTH is wrong with these folks???

Published on February 7 2006

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan police killed four protesters on Tuesday in some of the worst violence to erupt over satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which have provoked a deepening crisis between Europe and the Muslim world. Fresh protests erupted in the Middle East, Asia and Africa on Tuesday over the cartoons as leaders urged restraint and struggled to contain the protests, some of which in recent days turned from peaceful to volatile and bloody. In Iran, locked in a nuclear stand-off with the West and which has cut trade ties with Denmark where the cartoons were first published, a crowd pelted the Danish embassy in Tehran with petrol bombs and stones for a second day. After rioters set Danish missions ablaze in Syria and Lebanon at the weekend, the European Union presidency issued a strongly-worded warning to 19 countries across the Middle East that they are obliged to protect EU missions. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller called his Iranian counterpart "and demanded in clear terms that Iran does all it can to protect the embassy and Danish lives," a spokesman said. Depicting the Prophet is prohibited by Islam but moderate Muslims, while condemning the cartoons, have expressed fears radicals are hijacking the affair which has developed into a clash over press freedom and religious respect. Militants in Iraq have called for the seizure and killing of Danes and the boycott of Danish goods over the cartoons, one of which depicts Mohammad wearing a turban resembling a bomb with a fizzing fuse. In London, there were placards demanding the beheading of those who insulted Islam. In a new twist, Iran's best-selling newspaper on Tuesday launched a competition to find the best Holocaust cartoon. Denmark said on Tuesday that the violent protests raised concerns for the safety of its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan but that it had no plans to withdraw them. British troops were ordered to the Afghan town of Maymana after crowds attacked a NATO base of Norwegian troops with guns and grenades and police opened fire bringing the protest death toll in the Middle East and Asia to nine. F-16 warplanes flew overhead in a show of force while the Norwegians fired tear gas, rubber bullets and warning shots, managing to restore order by early evening. Norway was the second country to publish the cartoons.

All this over some not-very-well-drawn CARTOONS????????????????? And this is NOT all about "dissing" Islam, either. This isn't all about religions and co-existence and everyone living happily ever after. These protesters are not just demanding that we respect Islamic rules and customs. They are demanding that we LIVE by them, and that's something completely different--as well as not very damned likely. UPDATE: InstaPunk and Dr. Sanity have some great thoughts on humor--or the lack thereof.