From Diana West.net.

Written by: Diana West
Saturday, January 09, 2010 5:08 AM 

Tragically, but darkly comically also, this counts as news: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten printed Kurt Westergaard’s Motoon yesterday along with five other 12 Danish Motoons. As the Telegraph recaps (without running the cartoon as an illustration):

On Jan 2, an axe-wielding 28-year-old man broke into Westergaard’s home screaming for “revenge” and “blood”. Police – alerted by the cartoonist who had hidden in a panic room – shot and arrested him.

Aftenposten’s editor, Hilde Haugsgjerd, said it seemed “natural and justified to republish the artistic and journalistic body of work that is likely the cause of this violence”.

Aftenposten first published copies of the cartoons in 2005 …

Natural and justified, to be sure. But rare as a hot cross bun in Mecca. If you take a look at the Google News queue on the story here, you will see hundreds of stories reporting that Aftenposten published the cartoon, but no further illustrations of the cartoon itself, at least not that I could find. Instead, you will see photos like this generic shot of the Norwegian paper:

or photos like this one of Kurt with some of his non-Mohammed cartoons:

Here is a shot from Aftenposten:

Kurt’s Mohammed is the little head on right on the broadsheet above.

When I posted on January 2 about the near-miss assassination attempt by a Somali Muslim with Danish residency on Kurt’s life, I wrote:

News reports tells us Kurt is safe.

Safe. Kurt isn’t safe. Nor will he be, nor any of us be, “safe” until Islamic law is stopped in the West, its deeply advanced tentacles eradicated. Because don’t think it isn’t here. Sharia is here and in force.

To measure the extent, just watch the “free press” cover Kurt’s latest (and closest) brush with sharia-sanctioned death, and count how many times that coverage is accompanied by a picture of Kurt’s cartoon. Any media outlet that runs the cartoon is not under Islamic law. Any media outlet that doesn’t is under Islamic law.

Bully for Aftenposten and everything, but the cartoon tally to date reveals the extent to which Islamic law continues to be observed to the letter in the “free” press of the West.

Few seem to understand the Westergaard story in these crucially important legal terms. In a recent FT column, Christopher Caldwell ponders the Westergaard attack, calling it “an act of political violence.”

The aim, as best we can tell, was not to take Mr Westergaard’s money but to enforce “justice” in a way that would alter society’s rules and people’s behaviour.

“As best we can tell“? (“Blood,” “Revenge,” the jihadist yelled as he chopped at Kurt’s reinforced steel door with an axe ….) No matter. At this point, with Caldwell noting the attack’s purpose to “alter society’s rules and people’s behavior,” it sounds as if he is about to discuss Islamic law (sharia) from which the “justice” of killing Kurt for cartooning Islam’s prophet is derived.

But no.

He goes on:

A state’s authority rests, as Max Weber said, on a monopoly of violence. In matters of free speech about religion in Denmark, the government monopoly on violence has been broken. There is another player in the market, declaring that cartoons perceived as anti-Islamic are punishable by death.

And that player is named … Islam? Sharia?

But no again. Mid-paragraph, Caldwell changes course:

A pattern of political violence against ordinary citizens is something western Europe has not experienced in more than half a century. Some people describe radical Islam as a kind of totalitarianism, or “Islamofascism”. That is an oversimplification.

“Radical” Islam is just padding, while “Islamofascism” is a senseless word, but “totalitarianism” is absolutely dead right and let me count the ways beginning with the words of G.H. Bosquet, one of the 20th century’s leading scholars of Islamic law, who described Islam as being “doubly totalitarian.” This is no oversimplification, it’s just simple. Islam is simple. It’s just our elites that are … complicated. So why does Caldwell tangle himself up?

Even if he had contact with al-Qaeda, Mr Westergaard’s would-be assassin was probably working as an individual.

Does the assailant own a Koran? Is he a soldier of Allah? Was he carrying out jihad? Then this Islamic axe-murderer (attempted) deserves his official al Qaeda membership card and jihadi secret decoder ring. Whether he had them, though, his actions served to advance jihad terror and, as we see, further entrenched submission to Islamic law in what was once known as Christendom. Caldwell continues:

But this power to intimidate, though informal, is potentially decisive. It is the same power exercised by those who threaten journalists in Russia, those who kill policemen in Mexico, or the Ku Klux Klan in the US south of a century ago. Such acts make law.

Wow. A few paragraphs ago it almost looked as if Caldwell were going to inform his readers about the traditional, mainstream, centuries-old Islamic laws that sanction, indeed, demand the Islamic faithful to kill the likes of Westergaard. Now Caldwell tells them the furor is all generic, a matter of the “power to intimidate,” a la drug cartels or the KKK, through “acts” that “make law” along the way.

I suggest that he and everyone else brush up on their sharia. This esteemed Islamic legal source, Reliance of the Traveller, is  widely available.

Of course, at this rate, soon every home will have one.

Caldwell never gets more specific than discussing “a real taboo, backed by violence.” This, he says, is a “terrible problem.” Namely:

If a country cannot stop the violence directly, then the public will demand that it stop the violence indirectly, by thwarting the cause the violence serves. The rise of Geert Wilders’s party in the Netherlands, the referendum to ban minarets in Switzerland, the proposed burka ban in France – these are all desperate measures to declare that Islam is not the first religion of Europe.

“Desparate” measures?

I call them signs of life.