En rekke trusler fra islamist-hold mot Muhammed-tegningenes «hjemland» gir grunn til å spørre om det kanskje ville vært klokere å være prinsipiell enn pragmatisk. Beklagelser eller unnskyldninger ser ikke ut til å hjelpe. Det sier Abu Yahya al-Libi eksplisitt:

In the 34-minute video tape, Libi said Muslims were not looking for an apology.

«We don’t want an apology, we want to break their pride and to oppress them. You must fight them,» said the man, who was sitting at a desk in what appeared to be a library of Islamic books with a rifle placed before him.

Tankegangen synes å være at skaden er uopprettelig. Fornærmelser mot islam kan ikke gjøres gode igjen med unnskyldninger. Det må skarpere lut til. Som regel må de vaskes bort med blod.

«Believers, don’t let your prophet down and don’t let our response to this grave insult just be protests and forums,» said the man in the video which was dated February and posted on the Internet early on Friday.

«Denmark, Norway and France, you enemies of Islam, you have committed a grave offence against God and his prophet,» he said.

«Muslims, let’s not be slack about this … hone your swords and shake the ground beneath their feet so they can feel our pain, let’s send rivers of blood down their streets.»

Heller enn å spørre hvor reell trusselen er, bør man spørre om mannen mener hva han sier. Det gjør han nok. Det har vært flere lignende utsagn den senere tid, og det tyder på at islamistene har tenkt å foreta seg noe. Der Spiegel kunne tidligere i uken fortelle at gruppen Ansar al-Sunna, som er en utløper av mullah Krekars Ansar al-Islam, har lagt ut en oppfordring om ikke å la Muhammed-krenkelsen gå i glemmeboken. De navngir avisene som trykket tegningene.

The article in the latest issue of an online journal published by the terrorist group Ansar al-Sunna starts out innocently enough with a neutral chronicle of events: «On Sept. 17, 2005, the Danish newspaper Politiken published an article reporting that journalist Kare Bluitgen was having difficulties finding illustrators for his children’s book on the life of the prophet Muhammad.»

The next paragraph describes how another major Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published a series of 12 cartoons representing the founder of Islam. In the second paragraph, the authors become more explicit, describing the newspaper as an «extremist crusader’s paper» controlled by Denmark’s «ruling party.»

At the end of the article, the authors formulate a call to violence that may seem roundabout at first, but which is unlikely to be misinterpreted by the online journal’s readership. It’s not a matter of a single newspaper, the authors write, but rather one «of international significance.» The gist of the article is this: Something needs to be done, the prophet must be avenged.
…
The online journal has taken the unprecedented step of listing dozens of European newspapers that reprinted the Muhammad cartoons. The list includes German dailies such as Die Tageszeitung, the Berliner Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt.

Osama og Zawahiri

Både Osama bin Laden selv og nestkommanderende Ayman al-Zawahiri har bedt om at muslimer hevner krenkelsen.

Al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second in command, got the ball rolling several weeks ago: «The next thing I want to talk to you about is the hatred of Western crusaders, directed at the honorable prophet Muhammad,» the Egyptian said in a recent message. «This attack forces us to make a risky decision: Are we prepared to sacrifice ourselves and everything we own on the way of God or not?» He continued by citing the attacks on New York, London and Madrid as examples of how the West might be punished.

In mid-April, bin Laden himself commented on the cartoons. «I urge you to support our prophet Muhammad,» he said in a recorded message to Muslims. Bin Laden demanded the punishment «of those responsible for this terrible crime, committed by a handful of crusader journalists and others who have fallen from the faith.»

Stammer fra Tyskland

Sikkerhetseksperter tror det kanskje ikke er noen tilfeldighet at listen over aviser er svært grundig hva gjelder de tyske. De tror at det kan være Ansar al-Sunna-kilder i Tyskland som har kartlagt avisene. Dermed kan «hevnen» også lettere ramme Tyskland.

«Given what is happening, you have to assume there will be reactions from militants in the countries cited by Ansar, or against journalists from those countries,» says Guido Steinberg, a terrorism expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. «This kind of publication, backed by a large transnational terrorist organization, is dangerous.»

Steinberg points out that Ansar al-Sunna has a network of militants already on the ground in Germany, Scandinavia and Italy. The founder of Ansar al-Islam, the organization out of which Ansar al-Sunna developed, lives in Norway. In recent years, Ansar followers have been caught trafficking militants in and out of Iraq from Italy and Germany. The Iraqi exiles thought to have planned an assassination attempt on Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Berlin last year come from the same network. For a time, it is also believed that the Ansar al-Sunna Web site was run from Germany. And it can’t be coincidence that so many newspapers from these countries have been listed — it seems likely that followers residing from these countries contributed information. According to Germany’s domestic intelligence service, there are roughly 100 Ansar al-Sunna followers here.

Slik terrornettverk fungerer nå, så er truslene mer for oppfordringer å regne til autonome celler. Det skumle er at journalister er mer sårbare enn avishus. Det er ikke lenge siden en tegner i Tageszeitung måtte gå under jorden fordi den iranske utsendingen misforsto en karikatur.

Apparent al-Qaida escapee urges new attacks
In video, al-Libi exhorts Muslims to attack Europe as revenge for cartoons

Online Magazine Hints at Attacks on Papers that Ran Muhammad Caricatures
By Yassin Musharbash in Berlin