:: Mahomet débordé par les intégristes (Mahomet overwhelmed by integrists / fanatics) // “C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons” (‘It’s tough being adored by dickheads’) ::
Unfortunately, there appears to be just one person in both Egypt (population 77,505,756) and the world (population 6,446,131,400 — July 2005 figures) able to confirm that in the October 17, 2005 edition of Al Fagr there appeared a number of ‘offensive Danish cartoons’. Still, if Aunty says so, it must be true. Well, Der Spiegel (and Adil Hammuda) certainly think so:
Adil Hammuda, editor-in-chief of Al Fagr, a liberal Egyptian weekly, was astonished when the storm erupted in January. He had reprinted the cartoons that had been published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in his own paper four months earlier, during the first week of the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan — even going so far as to place the most controversial cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban on the front page.
Al Fagr is a young but prominent paper that made a name for itself during Egypt’s presidential election in September. But the reprinted cartoons failed to attract much attention.
“It can’t be a coincidence,” says Hammuda, “that the story didn’t explode until so much later.”
Hopefully, given that the edition of Al Fagr in which the cartoons appeared is inexplicably the only edition not available online, someone else will have kept a copy of the “prominent” liberal weekly’s October 17 edition… but who knows? ‘Today’s news, tomorrow’s fishwrapper’.
Finally, a joke from Irshad Manji:
A priest, a rabbi, and a mullah meet at a conference about religion, and afterwards are sitting around discussing their different faiths. The conversation turns to the topic of taboos.
The priest says to the rabbi and the mullah, “You guys can’t tell me that you’ve never eaten pork.”
“Never!” intones the rabbi.
“Absolutely not!” insists the mullah.
But the priest is skeptical. “Come on, not even once? Maybe in a fit of rebellion when you were younger?”
“Okay,” confesses the rabbi. “When I was young, I once nibbled on bacon.”
“I admit it,” the mullah laughs (not excessively). “In a fit of youthful arrogance, I sampled a pork chop.”
Then the conversation turns to the priest’s religious observances. “You can’t tell me you’ve never had sex,” says the mullah.
“Of course not!” the priest protests. “I took a vow of chastity.”
The mullah and the rabbi roll their eyes. “Maybe after a few drinks?” the rabbi teases.
“Perhaps, in a moment of temptation, your faith waned?” the mullah wonders.
“Okay,” the priest confesses. “Once, when I was drunk in seminary school, I had sexual relations with a woman.”
“Beats pork, huh?” say the rabbi and the mullah.
