When Carsten Juste decided to publish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten in September, he could not have imagined the fallout that would drag on almost to the year-end. A Pakistani fundamentalist party has announced a bounty for murdering the Danish cartoonists. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) made an issue of it at its recent summit. Srinagar downed shutters during a protest strike in Kashmir. Even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has deplored the cartoons.
The president of Shabab-i-Milli, the youth wing of the right-wing fundamentalist party Jamaat-e-Islami, at a rally in Islamabad on November 14 promised a Rs 500,000 reward for anyone who killed the cartoonists who drew caricatures of Mohammed, according to a report in the daily, Nawa-i-Waqt. The Jamaat has also asked the Pakistan government to expel all Danish diplomats.
Jamaat spokesman Shahid Shamsi, however, rubbished the news later, "This is absolutely foolish and baseless news. We do not believe in violence and we never had any such policy because we are a democratic party." He added, "However, we are strongly against drawing sketches of our holy prophet." All representation of the prophet is banned by Islam.
On Thursday last, terrorist and separatist groups in Kashmir called for a day's strike to express outrage at the cartoons. The strike was total. On Saturday again, hundreds staged a protest march in Srinagar. "An offence has been committed as they have published a cartoon of prophet Mohammad in a newspaper. It's an offence against Islam and we will not tolerate it," Fareeda Bano, chairperson, Muslim Khwateen-I-Markaz, was quoted in a Asia News International (ANI) report.
According to the Copenhagen Post, Denmark's ambassador to Pakistan, Bent Wigotski, asserted that he had no plans of leaving the country. "But the situation is of course serious," Wigotski said. "They might want to get to the Danish illustrators, but if they can't reach them, they could make do with a scapegoat." That scapegoat could be anybody, the embassy warned, and the Danish ministry of foreign affairs issued a new travel advisory for Pakistan on November 17 warning Danes not to visit the country.
"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 Associated Press (AP). He said the pictures were not meant to offend. The paper has steadfastly refused to apologise for publishing the cartoons, citing freedom of speech – a right cherished in the northern European country of 5.4 million that also refused to prosecute an artist who depicted a crucified Jesus Christ with an erection in the past. "If we apologise, we go against the freedom of speech that generations before us have struggled to win," Juste said.
"I vigorously condemn these death threats, which are worrying and unacceptable," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the Ritzau news agency, emphasising "the right of everyone to freely express themselves within the limits of the law without fear of becoming targets of terrorist acts."
The Post said Pakistani ambassador to Denmark, Javed Qureshi, denounced the death threats. "No Pakistani government would ever support such a thing, I'm sure that the current government will take action in the case. I cannot imagine that a bounty like that does not violate Pakistani legislations," he said. Qureshi was one of the 11 Muslim ambassadors in Denmark to sign a protest letter to Rasmussen about the cartoons.
Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had invited cartoonists to submit drawings of the prophet Mohammed after an author complained that nobody dared illustrate his book on Mohammed. The newspaper published 12 cartoons drawn by eight illustrators on September 30, calling them a test of whether fear of Islamic retribution had begun to limit freedom of expression in Denmark.
The cartoons caused an uproar among Muslims both in Denmark and abroad. Juste, on October 12, decided to hire security staff to protect the journalists working for him after receiving several phone and emailed death threats. The Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) expressed concern and said in a statement, "It is unbelievable that one can make death threats against cartoonists in Denmark, one of the countries in the world that shows most respect for press freedom." The country was ranked number one (jointly with Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland) in the RSF Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005.
Among the first to react in Denmark was a cleric in Ųhus. "This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims," Imam Raed Hlayhel said in a statement. "Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world. We demand an apology." According to the Copenhagen Post, last year Hlayhel had become the target of criticism from Muslims and non-Muslims alike, when he said in a sermon during Friday prayer that Danish women's behaviour and dress invited rape.
Muslim religious leaders in Denmark, who saw the cartoons as an insult to Islam and the prophet called on the conservative daily to withdraw the cartoons and to tender an official apology. More than 5,000 Muslims demonstrated in the streets of Copenhagen on October 14 saying the cartoons were "provocative" and "arrogant".
Eleven ambassadors from Islamic countries wrote to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmusssen in October saying they were offended by the caricatures and demanded an official apology from the newspaper. Rasmussen refused to comply and replied, "Freedom of expression is the very foundation of Danish democracy ... (and) the Danish government has no means of influencing the press." None of these countries which protested feature even in the top fifty of the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005.
In November, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) , an international organisation of 56 Muslim states, decided to include the issue on its agenda for the two-day summit which concluded in Mecca on Thursday. The OIC decision was criticised by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) which defended the right of Jyllands-Posten to exercise its rights to freedom of expression with regard to Islam or any other religion, particularly when the religion is an essential element of the global political debate.
The UN has, meanwhile, stepped in too – not to defend freedom of speech, but to deprecate the Danish newspaper for its alleged racism and Islamophobia. Danish daily Berlingske Tidende reported on Wednesday that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has penned an apolgetic letter to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which had complained about the illustrations.
Arbour said, "I would like to emphasise that I deplore any statement or act showing a lack of respect towards other people's religion." She went to the extent of saying, "I understand your concerns and would like to emphasise that I regret any statement or act that could express a lack of respect for the religion of others." The OIC had urged the UN to take up the issue with Denmark.
