Muslim Activists Determined To Kill Free Speech In Denmark – How Long Before They Succeed?
Despite losing a legal action in Copenhagen, Danish Muslims are determined to pursue and “internationalise” their case against the national newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Asmaa Abdul Hamid, an activist representing eleven Muslim organizations said they would ask the country’s federal attorney general to prosecute the paper and failing that they would go to the EU human rights commission. The decision came after the local attorney general in the city of Viborg, the seat of the High Court for Jutland, a peninsula in northern Europe that forms the mainland part of Denmark, rejected the case. State prosecutor Peter Broendt Joergensen said on Saturday that the drawings were protected by Denmark’s freedom-of-speech laws and did not violate bans on racism and blasphemy.
Twelve drawings depicting Prophet Muhammad in different settings appeared in Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s mass-circulation daily, on September 30. Al-Azhar, the highest seat of religious learning in the Sunni world, has vowed to raise the issue of the provocative caricatures with the UN and international human rights organizations.
Viborg Attorney General Peter Brøndt Jørgensen rejected the Muslim case, saying Jyllands-Posten cartoons were not punishable under Danish laws. He stressed that his ruling was not political and took into consideration the newspapers’ right to free expression. The verdict was welcomed by Jyllands-Posten’s Editor-in-Chief Carsten Juste. He said: “We will not apologise, because we live in Denmark under Danish law, and we have freedom of speech in this country. If we apologised, we would betray the generations who have fought for this right, and the moderate Muslims who are democratically minded.”
And to show solidarity with the besieged newspaper, a Norwegian Christian magazine, Magazinet, has published the same cartoons on Tuesday. “Just like Jyllands-Posten, I have become sick of the ongoing hidden erosion of the freedom of expression,” Magazinet editor Vebjoern Selbekk wrote. The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 revealed “that we are not facing empty threats. We know that the freedom of expression in our part of the world is being threatened by religion that is not afraid of using violence,” he added. Selbekk said he was not afraid of the prospect of facing the same indignation and even death threats that faced the Danish paper after it published the cartoons.
See also:
Something rotten in the state of Denmark
Islamic intimidation dashed in Denmark