Cartoon protests spread in Indonesia

The cartoons of Prophet Mohammed have become more famous than the Mona Lisa. Religious fanatics around the world have seized on this and used it as a lightening rod for their personal tensions. The BBC website reports that protests have spread to Indonesia’s second biggest city, Surabaya, in E. Java.

Protesters attacked the Danish and US consulates. Police fired warning shots. Similar protests are going on, copycat style around the world. I like the comment made by one Afghan protester, it sums up a common mentality. “They want to test our feelings,” protester Mawli Abdul Qahar Abu Israra said. “They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and to their newspapers.”

Nah, he’s not an extremist.

Here in Bali its all peaceful, and no one has said anything to me about the cartoons. Ika said if you upset 1 Muslim, you upset all of them and must apologise to the whole Muslim world. She said on a personal level looking at a cartoon or picture would not upset her, she would simply say ‘I don’t believe it is the Prophet Mohammed.’