Where did those three "extra" cartoons come from, that did so much to fuel the Danish cartoon row? Perhaps it is an academic point, but I, for one, am not sure I know the answer yet.
As I've written in earlier postings, the row took off after a delegation of Danish Muslim clerics and activists took themselves off to the Middle East to drum up support for their campaign against the 12 cartoons published in the Danish newspaper, "Jyllands-Posten".
They carried with them a 43 page dossier, containing not 12, but 15 images of the Prophet Mohammed. The three extras were far more obscene, depicting Mohammed with a pig's snout and labeling him a paedophile, and showing a praying Muslim being raped by a dog.
The Muslim delegates insisted they made clear the three extra cartoons were not from "Jyllands-Posten", but were included to show the level of racism faced by Danish Muslims. They say the images came from hate mail sent, anonymously, to Danish Muslims.
There is certainly a problem with this account: every time Danish or foreign reporters asked to meet the Muslims sent those letters, or simply to see the original hate mail, they were told no, or promised they would be made available, only for that promise not to be kept.
To me, the case is inconclusive - definitely worth reporting, but impossible to prove either way. Other voices in the blogosphere have already made up their minds, it seems, declaring the extra three cartoons were faked by the imams themselves.
In the US, lots of bloggers have been linking to Gateway Pundit, which pins the blame on the Copenhagen-based imam, Ahmed Abu Laban, stating as fact that he "faked obscene cartoons on his trip to the Middle East."
Gateway Pundit cites an interview with Abu Laban on the US Fox News network, including the following commentary by the Fox correspondent, Jonathon Hunt: "After the publication the Imam and others toured the Middle East showing the cartoons but adding three more new ones that were far more offensive than anything the paper published.
"He [Imam Ahmad Abu Laban] told us they were from threatening letters but promising to give us copies of those letters, he never did."
Also in the States, American Thinker, says: "these additional pictures were NOT published by the newspaper, but were completely fabricated by the delegation and inserted in the booklet."
The Brussels Journal, a blog which deserves credit for following the story long before the maintsream media, is slightly more cautious, posing the thought as a question. To quote from a recent posting of theirs, the original 12 cartoons were "so inoffensive in fact that alienated Danish Muslim fanatics had to add three truly offensive cartoons (of their own making?) to deliberately incite Islamic hatred against Denmark."
Another much-linked blog, the Counterterrorism blog, merely calls the extra cartoons "fabricated". Or were the images pulled from the internet - either by the imams, if they are lying, or by racist white Danes to create hate mail, if the imams are telling the truth.
One visitor to Gateway Pundit mentions an article in the Norwegian paper, Verdens Gang, which says the images were taken from "Christian fundamentalist websites in the US". This analysis is attributed to a professor at Oslo University. I do not speak Norwegian, but here is the link. More when I have it.
