Pakistan's ambassador to Norway Rab Nawaz Khan has formally submitted a complaint with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the publication of a Mohammed cartoon in the newspaper Adresseavisen earlier this week. «Terrorism is carrying out an act that draws strong reactions. Muslims across the world are insulted by this cartoon, and therefore it is an act of terrorism,» the ambassador said in an interview with the Norwegian commercial television station TV2.

The results of the TNS Irish Times Poll in this morning’s paper has put the cat amongst the pigeons. Giving the Irish No campaigners 35% to the Yes side's 30% the poll has caused panic. Here in Brussels the phones are ringing off the hook. Group and party leaders are in a measure of panic that surprises me as there is the inevitable plan B (for Bollocks).

I will defend all Western and indeed infidel countries against Islamic Jihad, but I admit I feel especially close to Britain, not just because of the long cultural and historic ties between Scandinavia and the British Isles, but also because I appreciate the good that has come out of British culture. It makes me all the more sad to see how humiliated this great nation is today, and how many natives feel forced to leave what once was their country.

12 June: Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty

Brigitte Bardot, 73, has once again been convicted of “racism.” Sued by MRAP, the LDH and SOS Racism, the former French movie star was convicted for the fifth time for "inciting to discrimination or to racial hatred" towards Muslims. MRAP is the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples, LDH is the League of Human Rights. LICRA is the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism.

This is NOT the Prophet Muhammed. This is a Pakistani diplomat.

A quote from Fauzia Mufti Abbas, Pakistan’s ambassador to Denmark, in The Copenhagen Post, 4 June 2008

I’d like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?

A quote from Andrew Coyne at Macleans blogs (Canada), 3 June 2008

9:34 AM The [British Columbia Human Rights] tribunal enters. […]
9:36 AM Faisal Joseph up for the complainants. [...]
11:45 AM The hearing now turns to readings from various blogs I’ve never heard of: The Brussels Journal, some Catholic blog and… oh, the late Western Standard! Not obscure, just obsolete! (The mag, I mean – the website is still in business.) The Western Standard reference: a blog post by Ezra Levant, the defunct magazine’s former publisher, dated Dec. 2 2007. This is slightly surreal: he’s sitting in front of me as I write this, laptop in hand, writing about being spoken about with reference to something he’d written about… this case. This is getting so meta I’m losing track… […]

A quote from the press agency ANSAmed, 3 June 2008

Former French actress Brigitte Bardot has been sentenced to pay 15,000 euro by the court of Paris for instigation to hatred towards the Muslim community. In December 2006, Bardot, 73, sent a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Interior Minister at the time, in which she demanded that the animals killed by the Muslims on the occasion of Aid el Kebir should be stunned before being slaughtered. In particular, Bardot wrote: "We have had enough to be made fools by all this population which destroys us, destroys our country, imposing its acts". These statements provoked the indignation of some anti-racist organisations, such as the human rights league and MRAP (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples).

A quote from the press agency ANSAmed, 3 June 2008

Four sentences on parole and two acquittals. A hybrid ruling was pronounced today by the court of Tiaret regarding six Christians accused of distributing religious material "which threatens the Muslim faith". […] [Algeria] has been in the spotlights of the local and international media for days for the controversial trial against Habiba K., the young woman converted to Christianity, who was accused of practising a "non-Muslim cult without authorisation".