- In 2005 Imams from Denmark provoked a global crisis concerning
cartoons of Mohammed which appeared in a newspaper (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-
Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy for a summary of the events).
Here are the events which led to the Motoons crisis, where Imams forged
inflammatory cartoons, to provoke Muslims around the world into
murder, including assassination attempts on prominent artists in the
West.
Among those affected by the chill on free speech was a Danish author
who, when he tried to find somebody to draw pictures of Muhammed for
a childrenʼs biography, got turned down by one illustrator after another,
because they were too scared of possible Muslim reprisal. [... On
September 30 2005] Rose [...] invited all forty-odd members of the
Danish Cartoonistsʼ Association to submit drawings of the prophet
Muhammed. Twelve sent in submissions [...] pretty palid stuff...
Bruce Bawer, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom,
London, 2009, p.42.
Following the Motoons crisis, and the repeated assassination attempts
on various artists, Muslims succeeded in scaring prominent writers and
artists more than with The Rushdie Affair. As we saw earlier, the
publisher withdrew from his contract for Fregosiʼs 1998 book on Jihad.
Rushdieʼs Satanic Verses never appeared in paperback, as an attempt to
assuage the cultural terrorism of the Islamic world. In 2008 a novel on
Mohammedʼs six-year old bride Aisha was withdrawn from publication
by Random House, one of the worldʼs largest publishers, because they
feared being slaughtered by devout followers of “the religion of peace”
(“Novel on prophetʼs wife pulled for fear of backlash”, The Guardian, 9
Aug 2008,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/aug/09/fiction.terrorism/).
Interestingly, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the American publicly-
funded broadcaster PBS produced a documentary about Mohammed in
2002 (http://www.pbs.org/muhammad/). The (otherwise highly
deceptive) documentary contains many paintings in the background which
dana p.
(Dana P.)
#1