Islamophobia Watch

Jacob Wheeler interviews Asmaa Abdol-Hamid.

In These Times, 28 March 2008

COPENHAGEN — Danish Muslims link the racist murder of a Muslim teen last week to an increasing Islamophobic atmosphere fanned by the reprinting of a cartoon satirical of prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

"Deniz Ozgur Uzun was killed because of his dark, Middle Eastern skin," Jihad Abdelalim Alfara, the chairman of the Islamic Council in Denmark, told IslamOnline.net. Uzun, a 17-year-old Turk attending a technical high school, was distributing newspapers in the Amager district of Copenhagen Wednesday when he was verbally harassed by three Danes, aged 15, 17 and 18.

"They tried to provoke him with racist slur," said Abdel-Hamid Hamdi, head of the Shura Council of the Islamic Council in Denmark. "He ignored them and went his way before they stopped their car and started assaulting him."

A friend of Uzun, identified by the media as Mohammed, said the three attacked Uzun with a baseball bat and a hammer, leaving him unconscious. The Muslim teen was put on life support at a hospital in Copenhagen with "severe brain damage" before he was pronounced dead the next day.

Alfara, the Muslim community leader, believes the racist attack is directly linked to an Islamophobic atmosphere in the Scandinavian country fanned by the recent reprinting of the prophet cartoon. "Was it necessary to have someone killed for people to realize that racism is on the rise in Denmark following the cartoon crisis?"

Islam Online, 24 March 2008

Jordan Shilton examines the resurgence of the Danish cartoons controversy.

World Wide Socialist Web Site, 28 February 2008

"The 10 members of the Danish parliament's Foreign Policy Committee, including Denmark's former Foreign Minister Mogens Lykketoft, erred when they canceled a trip to Iran two days prior to scheduled meetings. The purpose of the trip was to meet with members of the Iranian parliament as well as to look into such issues as the country's human rights and uranium enrichment.

"During this same time period Danish police arrested two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan descent on Tuesday, accusing them of planning to kill a cartoonist who drew a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad that was published in Danish newspapers two years ago.

"One presumes that Denmark upholds due process, and that in Denmark arrests are not equated with guilt, but remarkably 15 Danish newspapers reprinted this very same cartoon on Wednesday in protest against the alleged plot. The alleged plot.

"Even if these papers had waited for a guilty verdict following due process, it would remain the case that an infantile provocation of this magnitude is beyond reproach. Considering the vast difficulties worldwide that derived from the initial printing of these cartoons, there are simply no words to describe the decision of not one or two deranged editors, but a coordinated effort among 15 newspapers in what is generally regarded as a modern nation. Publication of the cartoons two years ago led to protests and rioting in Muslim countries around the world. At least 50 people were killed and three Danish embassies attacked.....

"For a government to stand behind actions that are so patently reprehensible as a unified media decision to offend religious believers around the world, and then to poison international relations by canceling a high level diplomatic mission is a near perfect error, a disgrace to the West, an offense, and a missed opportunity."

Frank Kaufmann in the Middle East Times, 18 February 2008

In the wake of the reprinting in Denmark of one of the 12 cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad, BBC religious affairs correspondent Frances Harrison finds the country's Muslim community dismayed but determined.

BBC News, 18 February 2008

CAIRO — Prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi called on Sunday, February 17, for a calm, rational reaction to the reprinting of a Danish cartoon ridiculing Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). "This is an insult to Muslims and an attempt to provoke them," Qaradawi, the president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, told Al-Jazeera news channel.

"Those people are provoking us to go in protests everywhere and Muslims have a right to be angry," said Qaradawi. "But we are appealing for the umma [Muslim nation] for a rational, wise and calm response." Sheikh Qaradawi stressed that Muslims must resort to all peaceful and legal ways to protest insults to their great prophet.

Islam Online, 17 February 2008

"Last week, Danish police arrested three men who were allegedly plotting to murder one of the cartoonists whose satirical pictures of the Prophet Muhammad caused worldwide uproar on their publication last year. Danish newspapers, including some which had originally opposed the publication of the cartoons, immediately responded by reprinting the picture in question as a symbol of their refusal to be intimidated. The national broadcaster showed it too. The contrast with how such a crisis would be handled in Ireland or Britain could not be greater. Here, a mindset of appeasement has taken root. 'Don't upset the Muslims' is our official slogan."

Eilis O'Hanlon in the Sunday Independent, 17 February 2008

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark's leading newspapers Wednesday reprinted a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that triggered rioting in Muslim countries two years ago. The newspapers said they republished the cartoon to show their firm commitment to freedom of speech after the arrest Tuesday of three people accused of plotting to kill the man who drew the cartoon depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

The Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which first published the drawings on Sept. 30, 2005, reprinted Westergaard's cartoon in its paper edition Wednesday. Several other major dailies, including Politiken and Berlingske Tidende, also reprinted the drawing."We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend," said the Copenhagen-based Berlingske Tidende.Tabloid Ekstra Bladet reprinted all 12 drawings. At least three European newspapers – in Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain – also reprinted the cartoon as part of their coverage of the Danish arrests.

Intelligence police arrested two Tunisians and a Danish citizen of Moroccan origin in western Denmark on Tuesday for allegedly plotting to kill Westergaard. The Danish suspect was released Tuesday after questioning, his lawyer Henning Lyngsbo said."He has no knowledge about the case," Lyngsbo told The Associated Press. "It doesn't seem that the evidence is very strong."

Associated Press, 13 February 2008

A far-right Danish political party controversially depicted the prophet Muhammad on election material yesterday. Now a high-profile Danish-Muslim politician has hit back with a poster lampooning the move.

The ad by the Danish People's Party, the country's third largest political force, showed a hand-drawn picture of the Islamic prophet under the slogan "Freedom of expression is Danish, censorship is not". The ad was condemned as a "provocation" by at least one Danish-Muslim group, as Islam forbids representation of its most important prophet.

Now Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a Danish-Muslim politician who could become the first MP to wear the hijab in the Danish parliament if elected in next month's poll, has hit back with a poster showing a hand-drawn picture of the DPP leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, under the slogan "Freedom of expression is Danish, stupidity is not".

Guardian, 26 October 2007

Osama Saeed draws attention to a very good post at Lenin's Tomb about the double standards regarding freedom of expression.

Rolled Up Trousers, 23 July 2007