New Muhammad Comic Printed

Via: Michelle Malkin --- Posted at Marta Salazar

Will car bombs be detonated in Rome? Will editors and cartoonists lose their jobs? Hmmm. Notice that Muhammad isn't shown. However other cartoons that allude to Muhammad have precipitated death threats. In fact, Muhammad took a dim view of poets that lampooned him. His response, was, of course, death, compelling Muslims through time to inflict the same sentence on anyone that "slanders or defames" Muhammad.

An Italian magazine close to the influential Catholic conservative Opus Dei group has published a cartoon showing the prophet Muhammad in hell, sparking outrage among Muslim associations here.

The drawing in Studi Cattolici's March issue shows the poets Dante Alighieri and Virgil on the edge of a circle of flames looking down on Muhammad, whose body is cut in half down to his buttocks, according to a description by the Italian news agency ANSA.

 "Isn't that Muhammad?" Virgil is shown asking Dante.

 "Yes, and he's cut in two because he has brought division to society," Dante replies.

Opus Dei distanced itself from the magazine, with spokesman Giuseppe Corigliano telling ANSA that Studi Cattolici is not an official publication of the group even though it is edited by an Opus Dei member.

However, he said Opus Dei members "are free to have all the opinions they want."

Studi Cattolici editor Cesare Cavalleri told ANSA: "I hope the publication of this drawing won't lead to attacks, because if that happened it would only prove the idiotic positions" of Islamic extremists.

Cartoons by 12 artists first published in a Danish newspaper in September and later reprinted in a number of other mainly European dailies sparked Muslim riots worldwide.

"Sometimes a politically incorrect satirical cartoon can do some good. It's only a reference to a passage in [Dante's] Divine Comedy," Mr. Cavalleri said.

"In any case, Muhammad was sent to hell by Dante, one of the greatest Italian poets," he added.

The previously-drawn cartoons are still causing havoc all over the world, including in the United States where people are losing their jobs in a growing atmosphere of fear.

Update: Opus Dei caved in, capitualted, backed down. Thanks to Marta Salazar.

Religions and their symbols should be respected and religious sensibilities should not be subjected to ridicule. The only road to peace and brotherhood is respect for others' convictions and practices. Such respect cannot remain at the level of theory, but should be expressed in concrete gestures and actions. Marc Carroggio Rome Office of Communications.

Opus Dei's capitulation is a sad example of how threats of violence by the Muslim world has cowed many of the rest of us.

"Religions and their symbols should be respected and religious sensibilities should not be subjected to ridicule." Respect and the caring for the feelings and sensibilities is a two-way street or a multi-lane highway. There is no respect coming this way from the Muslim world that ridicules and disdains Jews and Christians. Jews and Christians are openly persecuted and murdered in Muslim-majority countries and hate speech is circulated in mosques, during Friday services, and among Muslims in private conversations.

We can also bring up the virulently hateful, anti-Semetic political cartoons and anti-American cartoons that are published daily in Muslim newspapers and the fradulent Elders of Zion that depicts Jews as conniving baby killers. The charge of not being solicitous of Muslim sensibilities is thus hypocritical and self serving.

Of course Italian Muslims are winding up to throw a tantrum.