A brief word on an irony which shouldn't go unnoticed.

More and more stories have confirmed the truth of what I believe was pointed out first by Gateway Pundit: that the worst of the cartoons are not "the cartoons." The really bad ones (the ones which show Muhammad as a pedophile, with a pig face, and having sex with a dog) were never published in the Jyllands newspaper.

And now it appears that they were inserted and circulated by a Danish Imam who admires bin Laden and has a major grudge -- and whose highly questionable past includes working as a translator for Ayman al Zawahiri.

. . .Vidino pins much of the responsibility on Ahmed Abu-Laban, the head of the Danish Islamic Community who made the cartoons an international issue.

"He has a very shady past but has managed to become the face of moderate Islam in Denmark," Vidino said.

In presenting the cartoons to Islamic leaders in Cairo in November, Abu-Laban created the impression that the Danish paper published even the pornographic images, according to Vidino and Danish journalists who read the document that the imams took to Egypt.

"The imams manipulated Arab opinion by misinforming them and showing them drawings that never even appeared in our newspaper, making them believe that we are continuing to publish the caricatures," Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who commissioned the cartoons, told Agence France-Presse news agency.

I'm reminded of numerous incidents involving things like swastikas on gym lockers, phony death threats, and false incident reports which generate huge controversy and are later shown to have been fake. And of course, this leads to the old "fake but accurate" counterclaim. (Except I'm not sure "accurate" is a word I'd use, for that might tend to compound the irony.)

I'm just curious; if it were established that the "extra" cartoons were a hoax, then who should be punished, and according to what law?

I mean, I'm no Islamic scholar, but I'd like to know, under their own rules, are Imams allowed to create and distribute "fake but accurate" insulting depictions of their prophet?

Irony aside, I'm all for free speech. But it helps to know whose speech it is.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit continues his investigation, and has identified the pig faced man. "Two more to go!" (Via InstaPundit.)