WASHINGTON (AFX) - The cultural editor of a Danish newspaper that started a global row over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed stood by his decision to publish the controversial caricatures, saying they were aimed at promoting debate.
Flemming Rose, editor of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, told a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution in Washington that his decision to commission the drawings was legitimate, in light of the self-censorship that prevailed in his country and elsewhere when it came to dealing with Islam.
'There was a legitimate news story we had to cover and we chose to cover it in a not very ordinary way,' he said, referring to the letter he sent in September to 40 cartoonists asking them to draw the prophet as they saw him.
'My intention was to have them appear under their own name and go against this tendency to self-censorship,' Flemming said.
'I did not ask them to make (Mohammed) a laughing stock or to mock him or to make fun of him.'
