[CPProt.net] Cartoons ignite cultural combat in Denmark. Death threats against the artists.

Fri Dec 30 22:26:09 CET 2005

Cartoons ignite cultural combat in Denmark  
By Dan Bilefsky International Herald Tribune

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2005

COPENHAGEN When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons
of the Prophet Muhammad - including one in which he is shown wearing a
turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse - it expected a strong reaction
in this country of 5.4 million people. 

But the paper was unprepared for the global furor inspired by the cartoons,
which provoked demonstrations in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir,
death threats against the artists, condemnation from 11 Muslim countries and
a rebuke from the United Nations.

"The cartoons did nothing that transcends the cultural norms of secular
Denmark, and this was not a provocation to insult Muslims," said Flemming
Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, which
has refused to apologize for publishing the drawings. 

"But if we talk of freedom of speech, even if it was a provocation, that
does not make our right to do it any less legitimate before the law," he
added in an interview from Miami, where he has fled to escape the publicity
after living under police protection in Denmark.

As countries across Europe grapple with how to assimilate their growing
Muslim communities in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world, Denmark has become an
unlikely flashpoint in the growing culture wars between Islam and the West. 

The publication of the cartoons in late September has spawned a fierce
national debate over whether Denmark's famously liberal freedom of speech
laws have gone too far. It also has tested the patience of Denmark's
200,000-strong Muslim community, who say the cartoons reflect an
intensifying anti-immigrant climate that is stigmatizing minorities and
radicalizing young Muslims. 

In Noerrebro, an ethnically mixed neighborhood where the philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard is buried and where kebab stands dot the leafy streets, Imam
Ahmed Abu Laban, a leader of Denmark's Muslim community, bristles with anger
at what he calls the "Islam-phobia" gripping the country. Abu Laban said the
cartoons had been calculated to incite Muslims since it was well-known that
in Islam, depictions of the prophet are considered blasphemy.

"We are being mentally tortured," he said from his mosque, in an anonymous
building that looks more like an apartment complex than a house of worship.
"The cartoons are an insult against Islam, an attempt by right-wing forces
in this country to get a rise out of the Muslim community and so portray us
as against Danish values." 

Rose, of Jyllands-Posten, a former correspondent in Iran, said he decided to
commission the cartoons when he heard that Danish cartoonists were too
scared of Muslim fundamentalists to illustrate a new children's biography of
Muhammad. 

Annoyed at the self-censorship he said had overtaken Europe since the Dutch
filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered last year by a Muslim radical for
criticizing Islam's treatment of women, he said he had decided to test
Denmark's free speech norms. 

The cartoons were published amid an intensifying anti-immigrant backlash in
Denmark, reflected in the rise of the far-right Danish People's Party. 

The party, which holds 13 percent of the seats in the Danish Parliament, has
pushed through the toughest anti-immigration rules on the Continent,
including a prohibition on Danish citizens age 24 or under bringing in
spouses from outside Denmark.

Soren Krarup,a retired priest and leading voice in the party, said the
Muslim reaction to the cartoons showed that Islam was not compatible with
Danish customs. He said that Jesus Christ had been satirized in Danish
literature and popular culture for centuries - including a recent
much-publicized Danish painting of Jesus with an erection - so why not
Muhammad? He also argued that Danish Muslims must integrate.

"Muslims who come here reject our culture," Krarup said. "Muslim immigration
is a way for Muslims to conquer us, just as they have done for the past
1,400 years."

Muslim leaders warn that such rhetoric is alienating the people the Danish
People's Party says it wants to assimilate.

"Are young Muslims growing up here going to assimilate better when they hear
themselves described in this way?" Abu Laban asks. 

In the latest sign that Danish Muslims are becoming radicalized, Danish
police in October arrested seven Danish Muslim men aged 20 or under in
connection with an alleged terrorism plot in Bosnia. 

One of the men, Abdulkadir Cesur, 18, a Turk with Danish residency, was
arrested in a raid near a Bosnian airport in which the police found evidence
indicating an imminent suicide bombing, including suicide vests and 30
kilograms, or 65 pounds, of high explosives.

Of the seven men, whom the police describe as fervent Muslims, six attended
the same Libyan-backed mosque in the Noerrebro district, Danish
investigators say. The men studied under a radical self-proclaimed imam
called Abu Ahmed, 33, a Libyan of Palestinian origin who is known for giving
fiery sermons calling for jihad against the West. 

Danish counterterrorism officials say a growing number of young Danish
Muslims are being drawn to Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Party of Liberation, a
radical Muslim group that calls for creation of an Islamic caliphate and
whose goal is the unification of all Muslim countries under one leader who
would implement Sharia, the Islamic legal code. The group, which distributes
its literature at mosques and on the Internet, is banned in most of the
Muslim world, as well as in Russia and Germany, but it is allowed to operate
in Denmark and Britain.

Terrorism experts say it has played a major role in the radicalization of
disaffected Muslim youth. But because the group's main weapon is ideology
rather than explosives, Danish officials say, it is allowed to operate under
the same permissive rules that allowed the publication of the cartoons. 

Under Danish law, inciting someone to commit an act of terror is illegal,
but spouting vitriol against the West or satirizing Muhammad is not. The
State Prosecutor's Office investigated the group in the spring of 2004 and
decided not to ban it since it was not breaking the law.

Still, legal experts say that groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir are pushing the
limits of Denmark's free-speech rules. Claus Bergsoe, a Danish lawyer who
has defended Islamic militants, said that balancing civil liberties and
fighting terrorism had become harder since Sept. 11 and that the government
was beginning to clamp down.

In the first prosecution under new counterterrorism laws introduced in 2002,
a Moroccan-born Danish publisher, Said Mansour, was charged in September
with inciting fellow Muslims to holy war by producing and distributing CDs
and DVDs showing beheadings in Chechnya and glorifying suicide bombers. His
defense counsel described the material as "controversial art." He remains in
custody pending an appeal for his release.

Yet Hizb ut-Tahrir continues to flourish. Abu Laban, the Muslim community
leader, who also does outreach work with Muslim youth, said he had
personally observed the influence of the group. He said Hizb ut-Tahrir
recruited his son Taim, a 17-year-old student, by focusing on the grievances
of the Muslim world in Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya, and playing on his
sense of alienation by offering him instant heroism and a strong sense of
identity.

In December, Taim, formerly a straight-A pupil, was expelled from Vester
Borgerdyd, a Danish public school with a large Muslim minority, after
teachers overheard him giving sermons calling for the destruction of Israel
and assailing Danish democracy during Friday prayers at the school.

Abu Laban blames Hizb ut-Tahrir for encouraging Taim, who has since been
ordered out of the house by his father.

"Hizb ut-Tahrir knew that the son of an imam would be a nice fish to catch
and they misused him," Abu Laban said. "They sell a simple package by giving
young Muslims martyrdom in 15 minutes. If they were good Muslims, they would
have told my son to listen to his father," he added, his eyes moistening.

"Now he is being made out to be some kind of Khomeini," he said, referring
to the Iranian revolutionary, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. 

At the Vester Borgerdyd school, whose walls are lined with photographs of
smiling students in hijabs and Muslim dress, the headmistress, Anne Birgitte
Rasmussen, said that Taim had been attracting a large following and that she
feared his sermons would fan tensions with the school's more moderate
Muslims.

After his expulsion, a committee of Danish rectors banned Friday prayers at
all public schools across Denmark. Danish officials say that the maintenance
of civil order trumps freedom of speech in the public school system. 

"The tone of the political debate in this country, the talk about Muslims
and immigrants, is making it very difficult for us," Rasmussen said. 

In a secluded community center a few blocks from the school, Fadi Abdul
Latif, the spokesman of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Denmark, said in an interview that
the ban on school prayer was just the latest outrage from a political
establishment that was trying to criminalize Islam in order to discredit the
religion. 

"The government says it's O.K. to make jokes about urinating on the Koran,"
Abdul Latif said. "They are inciting violence and provocation so that they
can make new laws that discriminate even more against Muslims."

He added that the anti-Muslim rhetoric of the Danish People's Party had
contributed to a swelling of Hizb ut-Tahrir's ranks in recent months. "When
Muslims see the discrimination here, they begin to listen."

In 2002, Abdul Latif was charged with distributing hate literature that
attacked Jews and lauded suicide bombers as martyrs. A leaflet quoted a
verse from the Koran: "And kill them from wherever you find them, and turn
them out from where they have turned you out." He received a 60-day
suspended sentence. 

In 2004, Abdul Latif distributed a flyer exhorting Muslims to "go help your
brothers in Falluja and exterminate your rulers if they block your way."
Abdul Latif, a Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon before
moving to Copenhagen in 1986, said the call to arms was aimed at fighters in
the Muslim world - not in Denmark. He said he had been called in for
questioning by the police over the summer, but had continued to distribute
his pamphlets unhindered.

Even Hizb ut-Tahrir's fiercest critics, such as Rose, the editor behind the
Muhammad cartoons, say the group should be allowed to operate as long as it
does not break the law. 

But Rose acknowledges that even his liberalism has its limits. He said he
would not publish a cartoon of Israel's Ariel Sharon strangling a
Palestinian baby, since that could be construed as "racist." He would,
however, publish a cartoon poking fun at Moses or one of Jesus Christ
drinking a pint of beer. 

"Muslims should be allowed to burn the Danish flag in a public square if
that's within the boundaries of the law," he said. "Though I think this
would be a strange signal to the Danish people who have hosted them."

 COPENHAGEN When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons
of the Prophet Muhammad - including one in which he is shown wearing a
turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse - it expected a strong reaction
in this country of 5.4 million people. 