Veiled Kashmiri Muslim women of Dukhtaran-e-Milat burn a picture of the Danish flag during a protest in Srinagar yesterday.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP);
It was a provocative exercise: asking cartoonists to draw pictures of the prophet Muhammad that were published in one of Denmark's largest papers.
But no one at the Jyllands-Posten daily imagined the scale of the fallout: Death threats against the artists, an alleged bounty on their lives from a Pakistani group, protest strikes in Kashmir, and condemnation from Muslim leaders worldwide. Now, even the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights is reviewing the issue.
"I'm very surprised that the reactions have been so sharp, very shocked, and I find the death threats against the cartoonists to be horrible and out of proportion," Carsten Juste, chief editor of Jyllands-Posten told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
The paper refuses to apologise for publishing the drawings on Sept. 30, saying it's a matter of freedom of speech. One shows the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another depicts him with a bushy grey beard and a sword in his hand, while his eyes are covered by a black rectangular box.
"If we apologise, we go against the freedom of speech that generations before us have struggled to win," Juste said, adding the drawings were not meant to offend anyone.
The paper had asked 40 cartoonists to draw images of the prophet. That idea alone would be enough to offend many Muslims, since Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet, even respectful ones, out of concern that such images could lead to idolatry. Twelve artists responded.
Lise Poulsen Galal, an anthropologist with the University of Copenhagen who specialises in Denmark's Muslims, said many Danes would be unable to understand why the cartoons might offend Muslims.
"It likely would not have happened elsewhere," said Poulsen Galal. "In other countries, (people) have a greater respect for other religions."
The idea came about after the author of a children's book on religion told the daily that the illustrator for the book demanded anonymity because he feared retaliation for a picture he had drawn of the prophet.
"The purpose of the (drawings) was to examine whether people would succumb to self-censorship, as we have seen in other cases when it comes to Muslim issues," Juste said.
The turmoil comes a year after Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam by a Muslim radical because he made a film critical of Islam. It also revives memories of the 1989 death threat "fatwa," or religious edict, against writer Salman Rushdie over his portrayal of Muhammad in "The Satanic Verses."
Critics say the drawings in Jyllands-Posten were particularly insulting because some of them appeared to ridicule the prophet.
"Those cartoons are very offensive to every Muslim feeling, and to Islam as a religion," said Abdel Moeti Bayoumi, a theology professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. "Do you expect Muslims to remain silent or rise to defend their religion?"
Eleven ambassadors from Muslim countries signed a letter of protest to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, but his government has refused to enter the conflict.
"As prime minister I have no tool whatsoever to take actions against the media and I don't want that kind of tool," Fogh Rasmussen said on Oct. 24.
Denmark is proud of its extensive freedom of speech laws. The last slander conviction was in 1938, when a group of Danes were convicted for agitating against Jews. Eccentric painter Jens Joergen Thorsen, who died in 2000, escaped prosecution despite his deeply provocative work, including a painting of a crucified Jesus Christ with an erection.
Many Danes were caught off guard by the furore over the drawings.
The Danish Foreign Ministry said the youth auxiliary of Pakistan's largest Islamic group, Jamaat-e-Islami, offered a 50,000 kroner ($6,700; US$7,840) reward for killing the cartoonists. But spokesmen for the group have told Danish media that they have not made such threats, which have also been downplayed by Denmark's intelligence service.
In Indian-controlled Kashmir, many shops and businesses shut down Thursday after Islamic separatists and religious groups called a strike to "protest the outrage felt by Muslims over the insulting cartoons," separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani said in a statement.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the drawings during a visit to Denmark last month. "Any action that demeans other people's religious symbols cannot be accepted," he said.
Muslim leaders in the Organization of the Islamic Conference asked U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour to raise the issue with the Danish government, an OIC official said on condition of anonymity because he is not a spokesman for the Organisation.
Danish media reported that Arbour said she understood their concerns and regretted "any statement or act that could express a lack of respect for the religion of others."
