Youthful Folly

One thing is clear from Kartoonistan, the Danish Mohammed cartoon scandal: Nothing would have happened if radical Imams hadn't used the cartoons to instigate riots. Now there's a new test of the Imams nature and their ability to manipulate their Muslim multitudes: Can they go back to an old well and have similar success?

I ask because some kids in Denmark just did something really stupid that plays into the Imams' bloody hands. Reports Reuters:

Danish state TV on Friday aired amateur video footage showing young members of the anti-immigrant Danish Peoples' party engaged in a competition to draw humiliating cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. ...

The images, filmed by artist Martin Rosengaard Knudsen who posed as a member of the party for several months to document attitudes among young members, show a number of young people drinking, singing and drawing cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad.

The faces of the young people were blurred in most of the footage. One cartoon appeared to depict the Prophet Mohammad as a camel, urinating and drinking beer. The competition took place in early August, according to Danish media.

The cartoons sound much more inflammatory than the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, and the fact that they were created by kids who were boozin' would make them all the more reprehensible to Islamic audiences. Some clips from the video are available at Hot Air, along with more background.

Will Muslims respond as violently this time? Will there instead be a level of resignation that the West will do what the West does? Or a realization that all their rioting and all the destruction made them, and their precious Mohammed, look like an easily manipulated, stupid bunch of hooligans? With Muslim leadership ask themselves the same questions, or will the desire to build their power by bashing the West push them forward?

Hot Air's report shows that news of the video clips is spreading much faster through the Islamic media and Internet than it is here in the West -- so we may have answers soon. Initially, says the blog, it looks like this may not be Kartoonistan II:

Abu Laban, the Danish imam who led the effort to stir up outrage in the Middle East over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, is playing this one close to the vest: “[T]his time it’s a different situation. Of course it’s deplorable, but we all know the attitude the DPP have toward Muslims and Islam and these pictures were never intended for publication.”

hat-tip: memeorandum
Related Tags: Kartoonistan, Islam, Mohammed cartoons, Muslim, Jyllands-Posten