Indian Minister wants Danish cartoonists beheaded!

Here’s another bloke wanting to cash in the outrage over the caricatures for political advantage.

Mohammed Yaqoob Qureshi, a state minister in Uttar Pradesh, India, at a Muslim rally offered a reward of 510 million rupees and the killer’s weight in gold (which works out roughly to be RM 45 million or Aussie $15.58 million) for the beheading of any of the cartoonists of the caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh).

That’s inciting murder, but that’s a lot of money. He must be a generous man. Then he revealed that the reward will be paid by the taxpayers. Isn’t he just generous with other people’s money?

The government of Uttar Pradesh said the minister had made a personal statement, but it disgracefully failed to condemn him for inciting murder. Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state with a large Muslim community (and thus voters), which may explain why! The State government shamefully stated that Mohammad Yaqoob’s incitement did not violate government rules.

F**k government rules because the state government can make that up or even alter it as it sees fit, but what about the laws of the State and that of India?

The home secretary of the State government tried to evade the legal question by spinning: "The announcement has been made taking into account the feelings of the people. There is no offence to make such an announcement about a person living in a distant foreign country.”

Balderdash! India’s laws aren’t all that different from Britain's or Malaysia's, where it’s a crime to incite someone to kill. And Indian laws do not discriminate on whether the designated victim is a foreigner.

However, the national body of Muslim clerics slammed Yaqoob’s reward as anti-Islamic and anti-humanity. Mohammed Yaqoob Qureshi's inflammatory incitement is an example of how politicians make up fatwa or religious dictates as they go along, exploiting religion for their own political grandstanding rather than for pious belief. The unfortunate thing is that a hothead or one very poor Indian may take it into his mind to carry out the beheading.