2008-11-11/Is a new Muhammad cartoon crisis coming?
By Michael de Laine, Copenhagen 11 November 2008
Today is Armistice Day, celebrating the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War. But for Danish politics and international relations, it is not likely to be a day of peace.
In what could be regarded as a new provocation, Kurt Westergaard, a Danish illustrator and cartoonist who rose to international fame a couple of years ago by depicting Muhammad wearing a turban with a bomb in its folds, has drawn a further 26 illustrations for a new book by former Berlingske Tidende commentator Lars Hedegaard.
The new drawings include the prophet in the arms of naked women, more bomb-bearing turbans, US president George W Bush as a Muslim with crossed fingers and Danish imam Abu Laban as Adolf Hitler.
With Denmark currently under threat from an al-Qaeda group in Somalia, this new development in the Muhammad cartoon story could cause a new crisis for Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The public will hope that the government can act more competently than they did the last time.
Westergaard isn’t afraid for his own safety, nor for Denmark’s.
“I have no problem with Islam,” he told the Berlingske Tidende daily newspaper. “I do have a problem with terrorists using a variation of Islam as their spiritual dynamite. And our Muslim brethren must get used to the situation here in Denmark, where we can comment freely on things if there is anyone who kicks over the traces - be they politicians, the queen or God. We spare nobody.”
See: http://www.berlingske.dk/article/20081110/danmark/711100046/