One remembers the 2005 Danish cartoon fracas in which more than 100 were killed in worldwide rioting over a few mostly innocuous doodles. Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was attacked in his home and narrowly escaped an axe-wielding Somali. In 2010, five Muslims were arrested for planning of a newsroom massacre in the Copenhagen paper that originally published the cartoons.

The latest kaboomery at the hands of hostile Muslims certainly won’t make the already fearful Western press confront the “Religion of Peace” more vigorously. One example: a Time magazine blog reported the firebombing incident by blaming the victim as engaging in “Islamophobic antics.”

Satirical weekly hit by petrol bomb over ’sharia’ issue, France24, November 2, 2011

AFP – The offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published a special Arab Spring edition Wednesday with the prophet Mohammed as guest “editor”, were gutted in a petrol bomb attack overnight, police said.

The fire at the magazine started around 01.00 am (0200 GMT) and caused no injuries, a police source said.

Charlie Hebdo published a special edition Wednesday to mark the Arab Spring, renaming the magazine Charia (Sharia) Hebdo for the occasion.

The cover showed a cartoon of the prophet stating: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter!”

The depiction of the prophet is strictly prohibited in Islam.

A witness at the scene, Patrick Pelloux, told AFP a molotov cocktail was hurled through the window and set fire to the computer system.

“Everything was destroyed,” he said.

The magazine’s publisher, known only as Charb, said he was convinced the fire was linked to the special edition.

“On Twitter, on Facebook, we received several letters of protest, threats, insults,” which had been forwarded to the police, he said.

On Wednesday, the weekly said it would publish a special edition to “celebrate” the Ennahda Islamist party’s election victory in Tunisia and the transitional Libyan executive’s statement that Islamic Sharia law would be the country’s main source of law.

It would feature the prophet Mohammed as guest “editor”, the magazine said.
Charb on Tuesday rejected accusations that he was trying to provoke.

“We feel we’re just doing our job as usual. The only difference is that this week, Mohammed is on the cover and that’s quite rare,” he told AFP.

A Paris court in 2007 threw out a suit brought by two Muslim organisations against Charlie Hebdo for reprinting cartoons of prophet Mohammed that had appeared in a Danish newspaper, sparking angry protests by Muslims worldwide.

Islam is a totalitarian system that has rules for all parts of life, and food is no exception. In addition, it is thought that some of the proceeds from halal sales makes its way to the Muslim Brotherhood.

As is often the case with Muslims, no compromise is possible. Halal sharia-compliant food means no pork etc. can exist on the same premises. Forget about bacon on your burger if the restaurant is halal. When the Quick fast food chain turned some of its restaurants Islamic, that meant pork-eating French people couldn’t get the chow they wanted. In Lyon last year, a group of French pork-o-philes put on pig masks and protested the affront to traditional values at a Quick restaurant.

It looks like the same bunch is gearing up for a bigger and better action in a few weeks. The porcine provocateurs have produced a jolly video that reviews the pig-in from last year by way of announcing a Pig March May 14 in Lyon on their website Marche des Cochons.

Tundra Tabloids helpfully translated some of the Marchers statement:

Reflects the Islamisation of our country, the growing share of the halal food system in our concern for all the French who refuse to eat meat slaughtered in the name of Allah, often without their knowledge.

Born following the success of the invasion of Halal Quick Villeurbanne from 70 pigs in May 2010, this idea of big demonstration against the halal taking shape today.

We decided to place our event under the banner of humor and shift around the porcine theme. We consider the second degree is the best way to raise public awareness on the issue of halal and Islamization.

Engaged citizens, consumer associations, butchers and delicatessens, activists lay or cause animal breeders or simple Lyonnais please show your opposition to halal and Islamization in many coming Saturday, May 14, 2011 in Lyon, in this first March of Pigs.

Vive la France and particularly its stalwart defenders. My calendar is marked.

It’s curious that the article below doesn’t mention the ongoing crisis of North Africans flooding into Europe, which has certainly focused by French public’s mind on immigration generally.

Controversial French minister wants to reduce legal migrants, AFP. April 7, 2011

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s controversial Interior Minister Claude Gueant wants to reduce the number of legal immigrants entering France, including those coming to work legally or join their families.

Asked by Le Figaro weekly magazine whether he was going to do something to reduce legal migration, Gueant, who has previously stoked controversy with statements on Islam and immigration, said “of course.”

“I’ve asked for the number of people admitted as labour immigrants (around 20,000 per year) to be reduced,” he said in the interview to be published on Friday.

“And we will continue to reduce the number of foreigners coming to France to join their families,” or around 15,000 people a year, he said, adding that he had requested a study of other European countries’ practices vis-a-vis international law.

The UMP party of Sarkozy and Gueant has veered increasingly to the political right ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Critics accuse it of trying to win over voters who would otherwise vote for the anti-immigration far-right National Front party.

“In terms of asylum (around 10,000 people a year), our country is more generous, despite restrictions, than Germany or the United Kingdom, even though we apply the same international conventions,” Gueant said.

“If it emerges that there are anomalies in our practices, changes will be made,” he said.

With regard to illegal immigration, Gueant said that “before 2001, France only sent between 8,000 and 9,000 people back to their countries (while) today it’s around 30,000.”

He said the aim was to expel 28,000 people in 2011 but “Quite frankly, I hope that we can expel more.”

The islanders are not happy and indeed feel threatened by the mobs of Muslim men. Below is a video of local fishermen in which they said they didn’t want to leave their wives and children alone to go out and work because they were afraid of what might happen. The piece is dated is March 6, when there weren’t as many North Africans as now. The article posted further below also notes how the local girls are “being pestered by gangs of immigrants for sex.”

Below, the North Africans have built their own tent city on the island, with an abundance of trash.

According to the western press, the Libyan “rebels” are fighting a heroic battle against the dictator Moammar Gaddafi. And optimists have dubbed the regional unrest as the Arab Spring. But not everyone is feeling the hope. The men encamped in Lampedusa prefer to flee rather than fight, which doesn’t say much for the faith they have in their own societies. Many are obviously taking advantage of the upheaval to get into Europe instead of rebuilding their homelands. It must look too much like work.

Below is a video where the Tunisians protest that they haven’t been welcomed properly to Europe — they are outraged that the accommodations are no better than what they left.

The situation is terrible for the Lampedusa people, and it has been created by Europe’s willingness to take these thousands of faux refugees. They should be turned away by the military before they reach the island and eventually get to the West.

Special dispatch: Gaddafi’s diaspora and the Libyans overwhelming an Italian island who are threatening to come here, Daily Mail (UK), April 3, 2011

Swathed in Red Cross blankets, they were waiting for Silvio Berlusconi’s promises to come true as they huddled at midnight around a fire made from cardboard boxes.

Here in Lampedusa, a rocky island off the southern tip of Italy, the ten North Africans plan a new life in Europe — and believe the libidinous Italian Prime Minister will make it possible.

‘We pray for freedom,’ says Mohamed Fitouri, a 23-year-old builder from Benghazi, the rebel-held, second largest city in Libya, speaking in the firelight. ‘I cannot return to my country if it is ruled by Gaddafi. None of us can. Our future is in England or France. There is no turning back.’

Whoa! It’s pretty doubtful the British or French want any more Muslims residing in their nations. How is this situation not an invasion?

The guy quoted certainly is not much of a Libyan patriot. Mohamed has already given up on the home team’s chances. What European country would want a disloyal opportunist like him?

Last week Berlusconi made a whistlestop tour of Lampedusa, where 6,000 clandestini, or illegal immigrants, have arrived in rickety boats from North Africa — 70 miles away across the Mediterranean — in less than seven weeks. The island actually sits closer to the African coast than it does to Sicily, which makes it an obvious target.

Fleeing their turbulent homelands of Libya and Tunisia, they have doubled the population of this once picturesque holiday island. Today it has become a grotesque place, fouled by a toxic stench of human waste.

The narrow streets are thronged with men wearing a bizarre garb of tennis shoes and hoodies covered in blankets from the Red Cross which, fearing a health epidemic, set up a field hospital in a tent by the port two days ago. So many immigrants have been arriving that Italy has declared it a national emergency.

By night, the unwelcome arrivals sleep in wooden fishing boats pulled on to the quayside for the winter, down narrow alleyways, or top-to-tail like sardines on the floor of the port’s harbour office.

On the hillside above the port, there are hundreds more, in makeshift shelters of plastic sheeting and corroding oil drums that litter the hillside. Down below, the once-clear waters are awash with plastic bags, banana skins and soiled paper, the debris of suffering humanity.

Despite a massive police presence, and attempts to move thousands off the island to holding camps in Italy, the situation is potentially explosive. With teenage girls being pestered by gangs of immigrants for sex, the presence of so many young men has also led to sporadic outbreaks of violence on the few streets here.

Drug use is also widespread. Some of the immigrants — among them escapees from Tunisian jails — have smuggled in narcotics along with large sums of cash to fund their journey farther north into Europe.

But drugs or not, these men are hated by the 2,000 families who live here, and Berlusconi knows it. On Wednesday he promised to free Lampedusa of all the illegal visitors in less than 60 hours with an airlift and a fleet of ships to take them to the mainland, where their claims for asylum will be processed.

After that, a minority will be sent home, though many will be allowed to stay and eventually claim naturalisation. Others will head to France and try to board lorries bound for England.

But bad weather and a stiff wind have blighted the Prime Minister’s plan for the moment at least, with an airlift to remove 800 cancelled at the last second because the huge Army troop carriers could not land.

I watched as these immigrants, mainly men in their 20s and 30s, were herded back on buses at the airport by riot police, drafted in from Sicily and wearing medical masks over their faces, to await another night at the island’s one overcrowded immigration centre.

Meanwhile, 1,700 were removed by sea on Thursday. But three ships waiting to carry away the same numbers again never made it into harbour because of stormy seas.

‘They have not come for us yet,’ says Fitouri angrily. After smuggling himself from Libya into Tunisia, he paid 2,500 euros — £2,200 — to people traffickers for a 23-hour boat trip from a North African beach.

‘I have been here ten days and, of course, I want to leave,’ he says. These immigrants know, as does Berlusconi, that what is happening here is the start of a diaspora that could change the face of Europe.

Mohamed Fitouri and the others realise that if they can get to mainland Europe now, they will have a chance of staying.

For it surely cannot be long before the gates shut on this huge exodus from North Africa.

Since the beginning of this year, 18,000 migrants have arrived in Lampedusa. Over the same period last year it was 27.

The reason for the rise is simple. Alarmed by a constant trickle of illegals from Libya (including Somalians, Sudanese and Eritreans arriving there from the sub-Sahara and then paying Libyan traffickers for the boat journey) Berlusconi signed a ‘friendship’ agreement with the Gaddafi regime in 2008.

The controversial deal helped bring Gaddafi in from the cold. The dictator stemmed the tide of illegals to Lampedusa by  94 per cent. He sent his police on to the Tripoli beaches, arrested trafficking agents, and all but halted the trade.

Today, thanks to the Libyan conflict and the coalition air strikes, the agreement has been abandoned. And Gaddafi is threatening to wreak havoc by opening the floodgates again. He has promised to turn Europe ‘black’ unless his regime is left to stand.

‘There are millions of Africans waiting to get into Europe,’ the dictator said recently. ‘We don’t know what the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans will be when faced with this influx of people. Tomorrow, Europe may no longer be European.’

In the face of such threats, and to bolster his own flagging popularity,  Berlusconi has asked Italy’s regional governors, a reluctant Britain, and a wary France to take a proportion of the unwanted host of migrants.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini declared: ‘The migrants must be repatriated or distributed around other European countries. There has been a flagrant lack of solidarity from Italy’s European neighbours, who have failed to help, starting with France.’

So, what will become of the migrants? Already 3,000 of the 12,000 taken to the mainland from Lampedusa this year have escaped from camps where they were held.

Many connect with people smugglers and relatives to cross Europe’s borders, where passport checks are lax or have been abolished under European agreements.

The town of Ventimiglia on the Italian-French border is now awash with illegals trying to get into France. While some of the Tunisians want to stay in France, whose language they speak, others from Libya and poor sub-Saharan nations are intent on getting up to Britain.

Were they to make it, they would be allowed to stay while their claims for political asylum were assessed, either in a detention centre or local authority housing, and then remain indefinitely — receiving benefits and housing — if successful.

Deal: Libyan despot Colonel Gaddafi, left, and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi signed an agreement in 2008 to restrict the flow of north African asylum seekers between their countries.

One migrant, 21-year-old Yassine, sat on the harbour wall with his eight-strong gang asking questions about the benefits system in Britain: Was it true, he said, that they would be given money and a place to live even if they do not work?

In fact, they already knew the answers and were seeking confirmation of what they learned from friends in Britain and the internet.

Many of the men came here in craft no bigger than a dinghy. At least 36 have drowned in recent weeks, though local fishermen claim hundreds have perished and the true scale of the crisis remains hidden.

Laura Boldrini, a UN spokeswoman, has warned that those who have arrived in Lampedusa may be only a precursor for 50,000 Libyans who will flee the conflict in their country. And the chaos in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya has led EU officials to predict one million desperate souls will soon be on the move from North Africa. Could so many really follow?

The answer may lie in what Manie Fayal tells me as he lies pinioned between other Tunisians in the port office. There must be 200 here, covered in blankets handed out by the Red Cross three days ago when they sent staff to the island to coincide with Berlusconi’s fleeting tour.

The smell of sweat is overpowering and the men apologise, pinching their fingers on their noses, as Manie starts his story.

To light his face, those beside him flash their cigarette lighters or use the torches on their mobile phones.

Manie is 27, and until February ran exercise classes at a hotel in Hammamet, a Tunisian beach resort popular with Britons. He has friends in England, his ex-wife lives in London and, because of his good English, he would like to live there.

He explains: ‘We got rid of the president who stole our money and gold and were pleased. But nothing has changed for us. Of course, we want to get to Europe because we know it will be good to us.

‘It is a big continent. It has room for all of us, whether from Tunisia or Libya. We are sleeping here like dogs. But we can wait and wait.’

These hordes in Lampedusa know that not all of them can be turned away. And in tea houses on the dusty, hot streets of the troubled and divided nations of North Africa, they know that, too.

And, willing to take a chance, they will soon be on their way.

With that growing consensus in mind, how does opening up Europe to 73 million Turks sound? Membership in the EU means borders disappear into one big kumbaya continent.

Maybe something was lost in translation, but Erdogan exhorted his fellow tribalists to integrate but not to assimilate; he essentially wants his people to learn German in order to be financially successful, but remain Turkish at heart. It’s a familiar pattern of promoting economic assimilation only, not that different from Mexico’s ongoing propaganda effort to keep their immigrants hooked in as loyal Mexicans. Erdogan also pitched Muslim victimhood, Islamophobia, Turkish nationalism and Islamic politics.

Erdogan’s promotion of a Muslim fifth column didn’t go over well in Germany:

How well are Turks fitting in to German society? A 2009 visit from der Spiegel to a Turkish family was fascinating, in a disturbing way. The family practices gender segregation in their apartment, where men get the living room and women occupy in the kitchen. The teenaged son would prefer to live in Saudi Arabia, “where you can’t see the women” which he liked.

Here’s more about Erdogan’s visit to Germany:

Erdogan Urges Turks Not to Assimilate:
‘You Are Part of Germany, But Also Part of Our Great Turkey’, Der Spiegel, 02/28/2011

Thousands of Turkish immigrants gave Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan a rock star welcome in Germany on Sunday in a show of national pride that remains fervent, even after decades spent in Germany. He told them they remain part of Turkey, and urged them to integrate into German society — but not to assimilate.

The lyric keeps echoing around the hall in Düsseldorf. “The land belongs to us all.” The sentence isn’t referring to Germany, but to Turkey.

Immigrants are waving hundreds of Turkish flags and the chanting and the music are deafening. One woman shouts “Turkey is great!” into a microphone to cheers from the crowd. Everyone in the ISS Dome, a huge sports and concert venue, is fired up, as if they’re waiting for a rock star. There’s only one show in town this Sunday, and his name is Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish prime minister has come to Germany. He wants to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel but first he wants to speak to his “compatriots.” To people who have been living in Germany for decades, who were born here, and of whom many have German passports.

They have come from all over Germany to see him live, some 10,000 people. They say things like: “The Germans will never accept us, but we have Erdogan.” Or: “At last someone feels responsible for us, for the first time a Turkish prime minister isn’t forgetting his compatriots abroad.” One woman says: “Erdogan may get Merkel to see us as part of this society. He is our savior.”

Some 3 million people of Turkish origin live in Germany, most of them descendants of Turks invited by the government in the 1950s and 1960s as “guest workers” to make up for a shortage of manpower after World War II.

Muslim immigrants have been the focus of a heated public debate in Germany over the last year, with conservative commentators and politicians accusing them of failing to integrate into German society. Many immigrants in turn complain that they are still being called “foreigners” even if they were born in Germany, have German citizenship and speak the language perfectly.

‘I Am Here to Show That You’re Not Alone!’
The savior arrives almost an hour and a half late. “Turkey is proud of you,” the crowd chants in this city in the heart of the Rhineland. “We are proud of you,” Erdogan replies.

He starts out by appealing straight to people’s hearts: “I am here to feel your yearning with you, I am here to enquire about your welfare. I am here to show that you’re not alone!”

Erdogan wants to give his audience a clear identity. “They call you guest workers, foreigners, or German Turks. It doesn’t matter what they all call you: You are my fellow citizens, you are my people, you are my friends, you are my brothers and sisters!”

“You are part of Germany, but you are also part our great Turkey,” says Erdogan.

It sounds like a domestic campaign speech ahead of elections in Turkey this summer. Erdogan is wooing for votes among Germany’s Turkish population. In previous elections, immigrants with Turkish passports flew to Ankara, Istanbul or Antalya just to cast their ballots at the airport.

That is why Erdogan keeps highlighting the successes of his government in his speech, and paints a picture of Turkey as a modern, major power. “We’re not a country that draws on help, we provide help too,” he says. And: “Now my compatriots are no longer traveling in buses, they go by plane.” There are martial-sounding tones too: “Now Turkey will at last start building its own war planes.”

‘No One Has the Right to Deprive us of Our Culture’
Erdogan portrays himself as a supporter of democracy and freedom of opinion. Turkey is changing, he says, adding that all artists and writers who left Turkey and went into exile should return. The message is that the European Union should let Turkey join.

In a newspaper interview published ahead of his speech, Erdogan urged Merkel to drop her opposition to Turkey’s accession to the EU. “Never have such political obstacles been put in the path of an accession country,” he said.

Human rights, innovation, progress — the rural way of life that many Turks now living in Germany left behind them in the 1960s, no longer exists, Erdogan told the crowd. “We mustn’t cling to it anymore. I want you to learn German, that your children learn German, they must study, do their masters degrees. I want you to become doctors, professors and politicians in Germany,” says Erdogan.

And then he repeats the sentence that caused such a stir at a speech he held in Cologne three years ago. He warns Turks against assimilating themselves. “Yes, integrate yourselves into German society but don’t assimilate yourselves. No one has the right to deprive us of our culture and our identity.”

Erdogan knows that this statement amounts to a provocation in Germany — no politician here is demanding that Turkish immigrants should deny their roots or give up their culture. Erdogan adds: “German newspapers will pick up on this tomorrow, but that’s a mistake.”

His message to devout Muslims is similar. “Islamophobia should be seen in the same way as anti-Semitism,” he says.

And he has brought along a gift for his compatriots — a kind of light-weight dual citizenship. The so-called “Blue Card,” which gives Turks with German citizenship certain rights in Turkey, is to be upgraded. Holders of the card will, in the future, have the same rights as Turkish citizens in dealings with authorities and banks.

For minutes, confetti in the red and white Turkish national colors rains onto the stage. Erdogan’s speech is over.

It was a call for more integration but with strict conditions attached. Adapt yourselves a bit, don’t allow yourselves to be treated badly and if there’s a problem, I’ll come and help! It was a speech that did nothing to reinforce any feeling of belonging to Germany — Erdogan steadfastly appealed to the Turkish national pride of people who have been at home in Germany for four generations.

One woman stood outside the hall with tears streaming down her face. “I don’t need to go on a summer vacation this year. In my heart, I’ve just spent hours in Anatolia.”