Nu skal politiet i kirke.
Lene Espersen har fået politiet væk fra gaderne og ind i kontorerne. Men Italienerne og Belgierne er mere kreative.
New York Times: Five men were arrested in Bologna in northern Italy this week after their behavior inside a basilica aroused police officers’ suspicions that they were plotting a terrorist attack, Italian law enforcement officials said today.
The men, who were arrested on Monday morning, included four Moroccans, according to the officials. The police at the San Petronio Basilica, which is one of Italy’s Gothic treasures, had been on alert because it contains a 15th-century fresco with a depiction of the prophet Muhammad among demons in hell that has drawn complaints from Muslims.
The arrests seemed to underscore the persistent jitters about terrorism in Italy and the intensifying vigilance of law enforcement officials as the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon approaches. Security around the Vatican has tightened, for example, and tourists at some Vatican destinations have reported lengthening delays at security checkpoints.
Just two weeks ago, the Italian secret service agency sent a report to the Parliament warning that the country remained at ”an elevated risk” of attacks by Islamic fundamentalists. The report singled out ”ecclesiastic institutions and bodies” as potential targets.
Og her en UPDATE
The Brussels Journal: Belgian police is protecting a 17th century pulpit in the Flemish town of Dendermonde. The pulpit in the Catholic church of Our Lady dates from 1685, two years after the battle of Vienna when the Christian armies of the Polish King John III Sobieski defeated the Turks poised to overrun Europe. The sculpted wooden pulpit, made by Mattheus van Beveren, depicts a man subdued by angels and represents the triumph of Christianity over Islam. The man is generally thought to be Mohammed. He is holding a book which is generally assumed to be the Koran.
Two years ago, on April 16, 2006, during the height of the Danish cartoon affair, this website published a photo of the pulpit to show that there is a long tradition of depicting Mohammed in European iconography. Last Friday the Turkish newspaper Yeniçag reprinted our picture on its front page with the caption “Stop this hideous insult.” Yeniçag demands that Belgium remove the pulpit. The paper writes that “after the Danish cartoons and Geert Wilders’s Fitna movie this is yet another insult to the Prophet.”
