Norwegian law surrenders to Islamic law

Generally, if there is a sovereign state with a police force, you expect them to be responsible for law enforcement and the prevention of violence.
Unfortunately, in Norway where the editor of a magazine who published the 12 cartoons that have so enraged many millions of Muslims, has received many death threats from various Muslim groups.

Rather than rely on the police to protect him, he issued an apology and showed his allegiance to the head of Norway's Islamic Council, in order to avoid death.

On February 10, in Oslo, came a dramatic capitulation that seemed a classic case of sharia in action. For days, Velbjorn Selbekk, editor of the tiny Christian periodical Magazinet – the first publication to reprint the now-famous Muhammed cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten – had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists (who made death threats) and by the Norwegian establishment (which urged him to give in). But then, on that morning – the day before a planned mass demonstration against the cartoons – Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion, Bjarne Hakon Hanssen, hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo.

There, to the astonishment of his supporters, Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition on behalf of 46 Muslim organizations and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway’s Islamic Council. In attendance were members of the Norwegian cabinet and the largest assemblage of imams in Norway’s history. It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom: the dhimmi prostrating himself before the Muslim leader, and the leader pardoning him – and, for good measure, declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection, as if it were he, Hamdan, and not the Norwegian police, that held in his hands the security of citizens in Norway

At least the Danish editor has the common sense to not issue an apology over his exercising of freedom of speech.