Muslims have been on the rampage recently because several cartoons were published in Danish newspapers depicting Muhammed unflatteringly (one of the images shows the Prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, in another he’s telling still-smoldering suicide bombers: “Stop, Stop, We have run out of virgins!” – you get the picture).

In support of the Danes, the cartoons have also been republished in newspapers across Europe, as well as in the more gutsy newspapers in the United States. (If you haven’t seen the cartoons, Human Events Online has them posted.)

So Muslims are enraged and it seems that everywhere you look in the Middle East, protesters are dancing around a torched Danish, Israeli, or American flag (Michelle Malkin has photos).

I got to wondering: Where do they get all those flags? Are the Iranian secret police handing them out to foment anti-Western outrage?

Could be, but in at least one case, the flags appeared out of a sharp business sense:

When entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Dayya first heard that Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being reprinted across Europe, he knew exactly what his customers in Gaza would want: flags to burn.

Abu Dayya ordered 100 hard-to-find Danish and Norwegian flags for his Gaza City shop and has been doing a swift trade.

“I do not take political stands. It is all business,” he said in an interview. “But this time I was offended by the assault on the Prophet Mohammad.”
…
“I knew there would be a demand for the flags because of the angry reaction of people over the offence to Prophet Mohammad,” said Abu Dayya, whose PLO Flag Shop also sells souvenirs and presents.

He sells his Danish and Norwegian flags for $11 a piece – a price he acknowledged might be dampening sales. Many protesters prefer to save money and make the flags themselves from scraps of fabric, he said.

Abu Dayya sources some of his flags from suppliers in Taiwan, but he buys Israeli flags from a merchant in Israel, even though he sells them to be burnt at anti-Israeli rallies.

[Ironic emphasis mine.]

Read the whole Reuters article.

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