Europe has become the latest target of radical islamic protest. People are boycotting Danish produce and have closed what is effectively an EU embassy in Gaza. Why? Because of a cartoon. No, it's not 1st April.

I'll ignore my own confusion over fundamental Muslims boycotting the produce of a country who's chief exports are Carlsberg and bacon and skip to the protests.

As the protests and boycott made news, newspapers in 3 other European countries reprinted the original cartoons for reference, attracting further wrath, including protests on the streets of London. I posted this link to pictures of the London protestors earlier by accident. I had meant simply to save it in draft so I could edit it later. There are many banners on show at the protest but to sum up, they're all roughly along the lines of "Death to the infidels". There's one warning Europe that its 9/11 is on the way! Nice.

Follow up:

I can't believe that this hate march was actually allowed to proceed - it's clearly promoting terrorism and reminiscent of
some of Northern Ireland's worst times. Religious leaders need to lead, emparting the wisdom that while the cartoons may (or may not) be offensive, that any protest should be dignified and lawful.

The Danish newspaper published cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammed last year. I'm not going to go into a big rant about whether it was "freedom of expression" or "incitement to hatred" because I haven't made my own mind up. Anyway, leading politicians in both Britain and America have condemned them and the editor has been sacked too. My point is simply that these protesters have definitely crossed the line into inciting hatred (and possibly terrorism) and that should never have been allowed to happen!

By the by, Lurpak (Danish butter manufacturer) have laid of staff as a result of the boycott. The staff were Denmark based of course, not those based in their Saudi production plant.

Update: buildings go up in flames, in Allah's name. I feel obliged to point out that it only takes a handful of wackos to burn a building, but these events are still shocking.