Way to go Denmark

As you may all know, the Danes have recently been involved in a heinous act of incalculable proportions. To be more specific, some Danish folks thought it would be funny to throw a match in a drum full of gasoline and stand around to watch the flame grow on its own like a wildfire. Interestingly enough, what puzzles me is that people in Pakistan are having the time of their lives acting out their Neanderthal-like fantasies by burning bank buildings, throwing rocks at cars, burning passenger buses, among many other absolutely exhilarating activities.

I got a text message today from a friend in Peshawar which said “If Jews wish to destroy Muslims and Pakistan; it is quite easy for them. They just need to publish a few more cartoons and Pakistanis will burn themselves and everything else around. Pass this on for awareness” The message; while full of fantastic truth considering all the riots and protests are doing is taking us back to the stone ages, it is very specific to target the Jews as the perpetrators of this “cartoon” incident. How do we even know the person / people involved in the drawings were even of a religious affiliation? For all we know they may be atheists.

To fill you in, some Danish newspaper published some cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammad, the founder of Islam, depicting him in a very insulting way. I think that there is an unspoken limit to everything we do. No matter how bad something seems, there is always something worse. That imaginary limit never gets crossed because it’s always a step ahead of whatever is happening. Unfortunately, what the Danish newspaper did was to lift up the standard for limit-pushing acts, push it over the imaginary line and drop it to set a new standard for lowest, most despicable acts.

There are some things you just don’t do, no matter how bad you want to be. Danes just don’t understand that. Even though I am not religious, I do maintain some respect for religions, be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and so forth. I doubt that when the newspapers published those images, they had even an inkling of an idea what would result in Muslim countries. Pakistan is full of eccentric people who antagonize situations and manipulate them to create any kind of trouble they can then. Qazi Hussain Ahmad is one of those people; a religious fundamentalist troublemaker who foments social upheavals and then denies any involvement. These days he is instigating the emotions of young students allover Pakistan, especially of the extreme religious nature, and probing their respect and faith in Islam so that they go and burn and destroy their own country.

Please keep in mind that I am not generalizing and grouping all Danes under one umbrella. There are many who disagree very seriously with what happened and that is just as much a right as agreeing with the act itself. Burning a flag may be inciting as much trouble as publishing pictures of the Prophet (PBUH). Keep things in perspective, keep your pride above, don't lower yourself beneath people who try to antagonize you.

What no one seems to understand is that by burning down a foreign bank or burning up 19 passenger buses, we are not harming anyone but ourselves? Simply because they belong to foreigners, we cannot just presume any old foreigner is involved. You want to target someone, be specific, but then again don’t be violent. Your violence only makes the Danes laugh at us saying “look at those monkeys Helga; they are beating themselves up because we insulted their prophet. This is fun, let’s insult another prophet and see if we can stir up world war III.”

Protest peacefully, show them that we are, in fact, civilized people and that we are willing to do things that will hurt them such as boycotting Danish dairy products. When you destroy foreign owned businesses, think about the things we don’t destroy, the things we wouldn’t think of destroying because we can’t live without them. All the imported goods we consume in Pakistan, the things that keep local prices at a low because of international product competition, you only bring financial burden upon yourselves. Unfortunately, the people who can and will read this are not the people who need to, it is the ones who cannot read this or are unable to that need the guidance and direction of civilized people.

Shame on us…we are only proving to the Danes what they set out to test. We are savage, whatever the cost, we don’t think about the consequences of the decisions we make, especially when we cloud our judgment with emotion.

Shame on you Denmark, for claiming to be a democracy with no signs of being a democratic nation. You are despicable. Any harm that comes your way, even if it is not something I personally agree with as the means to solve this issue, it is because of your own miscalculated error. You cannot rouse the emotions of the millions of Muslims in the world and expect to ask for calm. Your Prime Minister is obviously not using his intellect when addressing a very severe and sensitive issue that has disrupted any and all relations Western countries have with Islamic ones, especially in the Middle East and Pakistan. I hope the people of Denmark have more sense, although though your PM is elected as a representative of the people's wishes.