‘A spirit of appeasement’

In the wake of official complaints about Swedish newspapers' printing of Lars Vilks's Muhammad sketches from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Egypt and the Organization for the Islamic Conference, Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has agreed to a meeting tomorrow with ambassadors from 20 Muslim nations. Among the demands for which they will press, as Egyptian ambassador to Sweden Mohamed Sotouhi told the news agency TT, are sensitivity indoctrination for journalists, a “permanent parliamentary committee ... to tackle Islamophobia,” and “a change in [Swedish] law” offering Muslims “protection from the desecration of the Prophet Muhammad.”

In short, complete immunity from criticism for Muslims and their creed. And the Muslim diplomats expect nothing less than abject submission, as Algeria’s ambassador Merzak Bedjaoui made clear in calling the meeting “an excellent initiative taken in a spirit of appeasement.”

All in keeping with Qur’anic scripture, to wit: Verses 48:29, which declares that Muslims are “hard against the unbelievers”; 9:123, which exhorts them to “let them find in you a harshness”; and 9:29, which enjoins them to fight unbelievers until they “feel themselves subdued.”