Swedish artist attacked during lecture on free speech

Time to return to reality. No doubt I shall blog again about the new government as its membership becomes clearer. In the meantime we can all indulge in unholy glee as we watch the Conservatives repeating: Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better as people they denounced in vicious terms but a week ago are appointed to important positions and they have to rejoice.

For the moment, however, I shall turn to other matters, for instance an appalling episode in Sweden, though one must admit the Swedish police reacted well. I found the story on Instapundit and followed his links.

Zombie describes the scene.

Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist, sketched some caricatures of Mohammed as a dog back in 2007, and for his efforts earned himself a fatwa — a death sentence issued by the good clerics of Al Qaeda in Iraq for the capital crime of depicting Islam’s prophet. Today that death sentence was nearly carried out as Vilks was assaulted (by a Muslim screaming “Allahu Ackbar!”) while giving a lecture in Uppsala, Sweden about his experiences with censorship. Luckily, Vilks survived; unluckily, he was headbutted directly in his face by the attacker; Vilks’ glasses were smashed, but police were on hand to prevent the follow-up beheading which the fatwa-givers had called for.

I wrote about Lars Vilks over on EUReferendum (here and here) and admitted that I did not think the cartoon in question to be particularly funny. And so? I don't think Garland's cartoons are particularly funny. Should I be calling for his beheading?

Zombie sounds outraged that this should have happened in modern Sweden, the land of enlightenment but I am not sure that is quite as terrible as the blog implies. The fact that the police grabbed the man in question says good things and lunatics chanting hate chants from the Dark Ages is just something we have to accept. As long as they do no damage to anyone or anything except their own larynxes.

Zombie also lists the English-language media that picked up on the story. It would appear that only the BBC ran it of the main-stream media and no British blogs either. (No, I am not impressed by the need the BBC seems to have to refer to Mohammed as the Propher Mohammed every time. And no, they do not speak of Our Lord Saviour Jesus Christ.) At least they ran the story.