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They're falling like bowling pins. Bruce Bawer nails the appeasers:
[O]n February 10, in Oslo, came a dramatic capitulation that seemed a classic case of sharia in action. For days, Velbjørn Selbekk, editor of the tiny Christian periodical Magazinet – the first publication to reprint the now-famous Muhammed cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten – had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists (who made death threats) and by the Norwegian establishment (which urged him to give in). But then, on that morning – the day before a planned mass demonstration against the cartoons – Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion, Bjarne Håkon Hanssen, hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo.There, to the astonishment of his supporters, Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition on behalf of 46 Muslim organizations and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway’s Islamic Council. In attendance were members of the Norwegian cabinet and the largest assemblage of imams in Norway's history. It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom: the dhimmi prostrating himself before the Muslim leader, and the leader pardoning him – and, for good measure, declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection, as if it were he, Hamdan, and not the Norwegian police, that held in his hands the security of citizens in Norway.
. . .
[A]t least Norway had its brief, shining moment of resistance. Not Sweden. Among the European leaders who have insisted firmly in recent days that their nations enjoyed free speech – only to insist even more firmly that that right must be exercised responsibly – was Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds, who, responding on February 9 to a Muhammed cartoon in the newspaper of the right-wing Swedish Democratic Party, didn’t just call for responsibility but enforced it, sending the Security Police to close down the party website.
. . .In recent days, these acts of dhimmitude by Norway and Sweden have had their counterparts in the corridors of international power. On February 9, Franco Frattini, EU Commissioner of Justice, Freedom, and Security, promised to take steps to regulate speech (though he later denied this); Kofi Annan, in a February 12 interview on Danish TV, said You don’t joke about other people’s religion, and you must respect what is holy for other people. Since when do the EU and UN tell supposedly free people what to respect and what not to respect? Since now, apparently.
Mr Bawer's book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within is due to be released next week (barring a fatwa against him and/or his publisher).
Definition of dhimmitude from Dhimmi Watch:
Dhimmitude is the status that Islamic law, the Sharia, mandates for non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, protected people, are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's command that they feel themselves subdued (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, are part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race.
