Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons 3 years ago, but decided to go ahead with ...

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This smells like hyppocricy ...but let me see what you guys thinks of this...

Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons

Gwladys Fouché
Monday February 6, 2006

MediaGuardian.co.uk

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

The illustrator said: "I see the cartoons as an innocent joke, of the type that my Christian grandfather would enjoy."

"I showed them to a few pastors and they thought they were funny."

But the Jyllands-Posten editor in question, Mr Kaiser, said that the case was "ridiculous to bring forward now. It has nothing to do with the Muhammad cartoons.

"In the Muhammad drawings case, we asked the illustrators to do it. I did not ask for these cartoons. That's the difference," he said.

"The illustrator thought his cartoons were funny. I did not think so. It would offend some readers, not much but some."

The decision smacks of "double-standards", said Ahmed Akkari, spokesman for the Danish-based European Committee for Prophet Honouring, the umbrella group that represents 27 Muslim organisations that are campaigning for a full apology from Jyllands-Posten.

"How can Jyllands-Posten distinguish the two cases? Surely they must understand," Mr Akkari added.

Meanwhile, the editor of a Malaysian newspaper resigned over the weekend after printing one of the Muhammad cartoons that have unleashed a storm of protest across the Islamic world.

Malaysia's Sunday Tribune, based in the remote state of Sarawak, on Borneo island, ran one of the Danish cartoons on Saturday. It is unclear which one of the 12 drawings was reprinted.

Printed on page 12 of the paper, the cartoon illustrated an article about the lack of impact of the controversy in Malaysia, a country with a majority Muslim population.

The newspaper apologised and expressed "profound regret over the unauthorised publication", in a front page statement on Sunday.

"Our internal inquiry revealed that the editor on duty, who was responsible for the same publication, had done it all alone by himself without authority in compliance with the prescribed procedures as required for such news," the statement said.

The editor, who has not been named, regretted his mistake, apologised and tendered his resignation, according to the statement.

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5392866-103681,00.html

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More On This Topic Now From BBC.co.uk

Cartoons: Divisions and inconsistencies


The "cartoon crisis" has demonstrated the gulf between sections of the West and the Muslim world, revealed divisions within Islam itself and showed inconsistencies by advocates of both sides.


The gap between the West and the Muslim world is still wide

A look back at the way the issue developed shows the key moments in what was a slow burn towards a crisis.

For this did not just spring upon the world, and decisions taken in the course of the build-up materially influenced the eventual outcome.

It began, in fact, before 30 September 2005, the day the original 12 cartoons of Muhammad were published in Jyllands-Posten.


Inconsistency

And here came the first inconsistency on one side.

More than two years previously, in April 2003, a Danish cartoonist Christoffer Zieler offered some cartoons of Jesus Christ to Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest daily paper and generally seen as right-wing.

One of the paper's editors told Zieler: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

No such concern prevailed when Jyllands-Posten decided to solicit drawings of Muhammad after a children's author, Kare Bluitgen, had been unable to find illustrators for his book about the Prophet (written with the intention of widening understanding). The illustrators refused either because they knew that portraits of the Prophet were against Islamic tradition, or were afraid of reprisals.


Internationalisation

Publication led to immediate protests by Muslim leaders in Denmark - and an immediate effort by them to internationalise the issue.

Imam Raed Hlayhel gave an interview to the news website of the Arabic channel Al Jazeera and said: "This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims. Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation."

The paper's editor-in-chief Carsten Juste replied: "We live in a democracy. Satire is accepted in this country, and you can make caricatures. Religion shouldn't set any barriers on that sort of expression."

At this stage the row was largely confined to Denmark. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen refused to get involved and declined a meeting with eleven Arab ambassadors mobilised by the Danish imams.

On 17 October, a curious thing happened. Six of the cartoons were prominently reprinted in an Egyptian newspaper, al-Fagr. The paper said they were racist and would insult Muslims everywhere and predicted an outcry. However, at this stage, nothing happened on the streets. There was no public outcry.

It took concerted action by the Danish Muslim leaders to effect a change.


Wider audience

They decided to take their complaints both about the cartoons and about the position of Muslims in Denmark to other audiences. In December, encouraged by an imam well known in Denmark, Abu Laban, a delegation went to the Middle East where they saw leading Islamic scholars and political leaders.

They took along the cartoons as evidence but they also included in a 43-page dossier three other drawings which were even more insulting and which had not been published in Jyllands-Posten.

The dossier revealed inconsistencies of it own. It contained some placatory statements to the effect that the delegation simply wanted "stable relations, and a flourishing Denmark for all that live here."

But it also contained some misinformation about Denmark. It claimed that Muslims could not build mosques and that "if you say that they are all infidels, then you are not wrong".


The 'non-cartoons'

The three extra drawings were said to have been sent to Muslims in Denmark as insults. However one of them, apparently showing the prophet with the face of a pig, has been traced to a photo of the winner of a pig-squealing contest in the French Pyrenees last summer.

It remains unclear as to how this last picture, a grey photocopy, came to such prominence but it does seem to have played a role in the raising of the temperature.

The crisis has exposed the fragility of relations between the West and Muslim countries

The delegation spokesman, Ahmed Akkari, said they pointed out the status of the different pictures on their travels but the "pigface" photocopy was later filmed in Gaza at the end of January when gunmen took over EU offices, and so somehow it had been lifted out and given importance.

Mecca meeting

A key moment came in December at a meeting of the Organisation of The Islamic Conference (OIC) in Mecca, itself such an important and relevant venue for a discussion of Muhammad.

This transformed the issue.

The OIC expressed its concern at "rising hatred against Islam and Muslims" and condemned "the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad".

Its statement attacked the "use of freedom of expression as a pretext for defaming religions".

The row had moved from an argument in Denmark through Islamic circles in the Middle East to become political as well. Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark on 26 January. Demonstrations followed across the Middle East.

Western governments strove for calm, with statements to the effect that there was a right to publish but a responsibility not to publish.


In turn this prompted a counter-move by defenders of free speech and the cartoons appeared in some, though relatively few, Western publications.

On 31 January, Jyllands-Posten issued the apology it had refused to give earlier.


Conclusions

By now, the crisis had exposed the fragility of relations between the West and Muslim countries. The publication might have passed without major international trouble if these relations had been calm. At the moment, they are not and in such fertile soil, the seed of conflict grew rapidly.

One side felt the insults deeply. The other saw the violence as overreaction.

And in process, the battle was joined within Islam. In Britain, this process was seen very clearly. The extremist elements made their voices heard first, with small, but fervent protests and placards ("Behead those who insult Islam" etc) that led to calls for police action.

But they also led moderate elements within the Muslim community to rally their forces and this they did with a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.

This struggle for the hearts and minds of Islam may yet prove to be the most significant battle of all, even more important than a confrontation between Western secularism and Islamic belief.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4708216.stm