Reuters:

Ramadi, Iraq, February 5: Militant groups on Sunday called for attacks on Danish troops in Iraq and people from all countries where cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad have been published.

In an Internet statement, the Islamic Army of Iraq, which has claimed responsibility for killing foreign hostages, urged militants to kidnap Danes and “cut them into as many pieces as the number of newspapers that printed the cartoons”.

“The Islamic Army in Iraq also declares that all countries whose newspapers printed the insulting and disgraceful pictures are legitimate targets and our response will be … tremendous.”

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Meanwhile, an Italian Roman Catholic priest was shot dead in his church in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon on Sunday, police said. Motive not known.

Jim Geraghty’s take on Turkish reaction to the Cartoon Jihad is here.

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Reader Brent A. writes with background info about the church where the Italian Catholic priest was shot:

I was at that church back in 2001 with my girlfriend at that time. She was Turkish and Muslim from Trabzon (I was stationed at Incirlik Air Base), and thought that she would show me something that would interest me. She took me to the Catholic Church because in her mind, and many Turks’ minds,
Catholics and Protestants have as much distinction as Sufi’s, Sunni’s, Shi’ites, and Wahabi’s do in our ours. Her goal was to prove to me that Turkey does have other religions besides Islam. It was the only Catholic Church in Trabzon, and I don’t believe there is usually more than one per city anywhere in Turkey.

Most of your readers probably think the church is situated like they are here in America, you drive up, park, and then walk in. In Turkey, the Catholic Churches are located behind fortress like walls with no indication of what is behind the wall. They have two gates: one for pedestrian and one for deliveries. Usually only those scheduled deliveries are allowed in the delivery gate. Unscheduled deliveries were turned away. At the pedestrian gate, you knock on the gate and someone comes answer to see what you want. If you clear their cursory check, they let you in. In Izmir, they had a gate guard that screened visitors. In Trabzon, one of the helpers or the priest himself would answer the gate. In both churches, in Izmir’s and Trabzon’s, if you were European/American, you were usually cleared in with little fuss. They were a little more thorough with the Turks, not due to terrorist reasons, but Turkey has a law against prosletyzing.

It is supposed to be applied to all religions, including Islam, but in practice is more geared toward the other religions. They screen them so they don’t run afoul of this law. When I was there, the priest was from Germany and spoke German, Turkish, and English. He told me that they were usually rotated through this particular church every few years as the congregation was pretty small, mainly foreigners living in Trabzon for various reasons, and there wasn’t much other work outside the church they could do because of the prosletyzing law. They had to be careful of what they did down town so it wouldn’t be construed as the Catholic Church trying to move in and take over. Since the priest was the only fatality, my guess is that he was alone in the Church when the bell rang (you have to pull a rope that rings a bell to let someone know you’re out there) and he came to answer the gate. When he opened it, that is probably when they shot him. You can park right outside the gate. Anyway, my main thrust was to let you know how the churches are built in Turkey.

Mosques there are a lot like churches here, you can pretty much walk up to the door anytime of day, but they have people there to make sure you’re properly dressed to enter, such as women have their headscarfs on. The only Mosque in Turkey that I saw that waived the headscarf rule was the Blue Mosque in Istanbul because of all the Tourists. All the other Mosques would allow tourists in as long as they complied with the dress requirements.

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Mark Levin has a question: What about these cartoons?