They're still at it: Palestinian demonstrators unhappy with the reprinting of the Muhammad cartoons in 2008. (Abid Katib/Getty Images)
Kurt Westgaard is the 74-year-old Danish cartoonist who, on Sept. 30, 2005, published one of the 12 time-bombs that became known as the Muhammad Cartoons.
Westgaard's was one of the least humorous and most incendiary of the bunch. This one, depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a lit bomb on his head for a turban. "I attempted to show that terrorists get their spiritual ammunition from parts of Islam and with this spiritual ammunition, and with dynamite and other explosives, they kill people," he told Canada's National Post last October. At the time of the interview Westgaard was reveling in his excursion to Canada, where he was living without surveillance or police escort for the first time in years. "I live in a house now which is really a fortress, with steel doors, a panic room, reinforced glass in the windows, surveillance cameras and so on," he said. One of "10 different safe houses" and "10 different cars" he had to drive at one point.
So what happened today, back in Aarhus, where Westergaard lives? A 28-year-old Somali man armed with a knife and an ax apparently breached the security perimeter and went after Westergaard, who had his 5-year-old granddaughter over for a sleepover. The cartoonist and his granddaughter made use of the panic room, from where he called the police. (What, no surveillance?) Two minutes later the police encountered the ax-wielder and shot him in one knee and one hand. The Danish intelligence service claims the man has "close relations to the Somali terrorist group, Al Shabab, and Al Qaeda leaders in eastern Africa," though the man also had a permit to live in Denmark. Go figure.
Westgaard of course has always reveled in the art of self-fulfilling prophesies. "I showed this in a cartoon and what happened? They want to kill me, so I think I was right," he'd told the National Post.
I don't question the charge that Westgaard's cartoon was distasteful, intentionally inflammatory, incendiary, offensive--whatever you want to call it. But none of that overrides his right to have produce it and the Danigh newspaper Jyllands-Posten's right to publish it. And none of it, none whatsoever, justifies any act of violence toward Westgaard. They were cartoons, for the prophet's sake!
Yet the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference is pushing the reviving and enforcement of a pernicious article--Article 20--of the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states: "Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law." The article isn;t without some merit. You cannot incite violence. But it's so broadly worded that it could apply to any loony interpretation of "hostility or violence." Penning and publishing a cartoon isn't that kind of incitement (or shouldn't be interpreted as such). The Islamic Conference thinks it is.
That's where we still are, and why would-be murderers like the Somali who went after Westgaard are, for the Islamic Conference, less the issue than Westgaard himself. As long as the Islamic Conference has it in reverse, controversies such as the Muhammad Cartoons and the collateral follies they provoke will be with us.
See Also:
- Kurt Westgaard's Muhammad cartoon
- Complete Muhammad Cartoons Gallery
- Al-Qaeda, Al Jazeera, and the Muhammad Cartoons Controversy
- The Muhammad Cartoons Controversy
- Muhammad Cartoons Book Censors the Cartoons
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
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