From the Times of India [2], March 2:
Britain's far right British National Party (BNP [3]) has handed out thousands of leaflets showing the controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, reports said on Thursday.
According to reports, the BNP, a small but vociferous anti-immigrant party, justified the distribution saying it wanted to "defend free speech."
The leaflets were handed out in Staffordshire in the English Midlands, where the BNP is particularly strong and the proportion of citizens of Indian and Pakistani origin is high.
Phil Edwards, press officer for the BNP, said that half a million copies of the leaflets had been printed for distribution nationwide.
The most depressing thing about this whole imbrolgio is how it has allowed vile xenophobes to appropriate the issue free speech—assisted by the idiot left [4], which has completley abdicted the issue.
This has resulted in some nearly surreal developments. For instance, Zombie Time [5], some bitter, lonely right-wing Islamophobes in the multi-culti San Francisco Bay Area, have put up a Mohammed Image Archive [6] page—exhibiting truly beautiful images of the prophet from Islamic medieval paintings and illuminated manuscripts. The images are mostly, although not exclusively, from the Shiite world, where the prohibition of graphic depictions was less strict and universal. How bizarre that this legacy of Islamic art is being displayed by Islamophobes to thumb their noses at Islam.
See our last post [7] on the cartoon controversy.
