Adel Hamouda can't take the heat
Adel Hamouda, the editor of Al Fagr newspaper, the one that published the cartoons back in october, has officially left the country for an undisclosed number of days in a journalistic investigation mission according to this week's edition of the newspaper and will come back "soon" with "journalistic surprises". This, of course, has absolutely nothing with the fact that an onslaught of phone calls from the international media demanding that he verify the story that he did indeed publish those cartoon in Ramadan with nothing happening to be true. He probably didn't look at his Jordanian counterparts- who have been in jail since they published those cartoons and were just allowed to be released on bail- and think "Shit, that could be me. I better get out of here!". No, that probably never happend at all, and this is all just a co-incidence! Right? Riiiighhhttt!
posted by The Sandmonkey @ 2/15/2006 01:18:00 AM
10 Comments:
Gee, I wonder what his "journalistic surprises" are going to be.
Considering everything going on, I don't even want to try and guess.
This could be good. Hope so. Hope he finds the dossier Laban brought with him on his tour of the Muslim world. (Egypt, Lebanon .. )and publish it.
Just in. The Norwegian government are sponsoring a trip for the leader for the Islam umbrella org. Mohammed Hamdan, one Zulqarmain Sakandar, a Norwegian priest to go to the middle east to meet with, amongst other Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
One thing is that this trip is sponsored by the Foreign dep, another is that Mr Hamdan spoke out on Arabic TV saying: In Norway freedom of speech is sadly presiding the consideration of the Prophet. How crazy is that!!
You get a free trip to try to patch things up, and then you slander the laws of the country that gave you a new home, money to your mosques and organisations, freedom to pray during work hours, permission to have a loudspeaker on the minaret to broadcast over Oslo that God is… Whatever he is.
What does this guys think? That we can't read, understand, or even get Arabic television in Norway? Or do they think they can get away with murder because they play the victim role to perfection?
And why do we use the taxpayer’s money to fund such a trip? We just give them the notion that freedom of speech is something we can alter... and that Norway can say sorry on behalf of the newspaper. What is the world coming to?
(Norwegian Sceptic with a blog in the making.. I think)
Guys, Adel hammouda is supposedly a secular writer, though i dont like his writings that much but i think there should be support for him like the support shown for the jordanian editors. We are about to change our lives to be ruled by yobs & ignorant hoodlums just because they can shout & scream in the streets & have no qualms about killing in the name of God.
Saudi arabia started all this & im guessing they want to drive another wedge between muslims living in the western world & the western world itself to recruit more fanatics & to impose their wahabi ideology on them & thus be a tool in pressuring western governments just like they want to be the Godfather of the Middle east & Islamic countries.
Well, at least your journalists ARE following what's going on in the world.. not like in this Scandinavian country called Finland. Yes this is the same country who's leading newspaper is Helsingin Sanomat (see Shameless Plug from yesterday). Yes, we are the only country in Scandinavia, in fact I think in the Western World where cartoons have not been reprinted yet, see this map (Finland is north-east from Denmark, between Sweden and Russia). Oh, did I say that Finnish media has not yet revealed the story about an egyptian newspaper publishing the cartoons in October? ;) But wait it gets better:
On Friday, a Finnish nationalist organization Suomen Sisu published the cartoons on-line. Immediately a Finnish MP, from the conservative party!, demanded to take them off, and National Bureau of Investigation decided to conduct a preliminary criminal investigation based on the Finnish penal code's section on the sanctity of religion. Yesterday our Prime Minister apologised for Suomen Sisu's cartoon posting "on behalf of the Finnish Government"! Today, we are told that our Foreign Minister had sent letters (letter in English here) on Monday to the editors of national newspapers in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria. In the letters, he states that "he is glad that the cartoons in question, depicting the prophet Muhammed, had not been printed in any Finnish newspaper". I only hope that he sent a letter to the editor of Al Fagr also ;)
What next...I don't know anymore if I should cry of laugh!
Ok, so maybe his journalistic surprise is they are going to be needing a new editor. :-)
No more smilies or doodling for me. Can't be too careful.
Yemeni editors are also in trouble:
Detained Yemen editor ran blasphemous caricatures to defend Islam: lawyer
(Updated at 2330 PST)
SANAA: The defence lawyer of a Yemeni newspaper editor detained for reprinting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) blasphemous caricatures said Wednesday that his client only ran the controversial caricatures as a means to condemn them.
"Reprinting was meant to defend Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and to denounce them," Mohammed Nagi Allaw told the court.
Allaw asked the court to free the defendant who he said was only jailed because of pressure due to the outrage across the Muslim world at the publication of the cartoons by European newspapers.
His client, Mohammed al-Assaadi, editor of the English-language Yemen Observer, also denied the accusation and insisted he was a devout Muslim who could not defame the prophet.
The trial was adjourned to February 22.
Assaadi was arrested last Saturday after his weekly on February 4 became the third publication in Yemen to reprint the controversial blasphemous caricatures.
Whenever I have the opportunity, I like to see El-Fajr newspaper. I would say let us give Hammouda a chance to see what will happen in the next period before supposing he is escaping or somewhat.
Egyptian in Germany
Anonymous 4:12, I'm not laughing anymore, my soul is crying. I wrote more or less the same additions to my most recent comment at timetoprotest.blogspot.com. And more is to follow. President Halonen has now jumped on the apologizing/regretting bandwagon - so far no press release in English available. That saves non-Finnish speakers from additional nervous breakdowns.
The Lutheran Archbishop has now at least twice condemned the cartoons. I've never heard him utter a word about the lack of religious freedom in some of the countries most vehemently denying the cartoons.
For our foreign readers, to point how seriously absurd things are now getting, NBI is not exactly our FBI but their mission includes serious crime, international criminal gangs, organized crime, money laundering, trafficking of people... and now also cartoons.
And what makes things even more absurd is that I'm not sure anymore whether the cartoons on the Suomen Sisu website are even on a Finnish server. At least it's not a Finnish .fi but an international .org domain.
So, it might be that our president, prime minister and soon perhaps loads of others are apologizing for cartoons published by a niché organization on a foreign server, which in turn is now under investigation by the police body responsible for the most serious crimes committed here.
God save us from these people, and God save me from high blood pressure.
We should establish a Hall of Shame for those people who cave in the deepest and fastest. I think my beloved country would have several candidates for that position for future generations to mock.
By the way, Helsingin Sanomat kind of reported the Freedom for Egyptians/Sandmonkey scoop last Sunday. Kind of because their cultural editor, withour mentioníng the sources, wrote about a Jordanian (sic) paper having published the cartoons in November (sic).
No wonder the not so / at all free press messes things up if a quality paper does it, too.
Guess you didn't see this link on cairolive.com:
Adel Hamouda quoted in Time magazine about his paper El-Fajr printing the cartoons many months ago: "Those who saw the cartoons did not react, and those who reacted are the ones who did not see them."
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