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October 26, 2006

Denmark: Muslim Cartoon Lawsuit Thrown Out

On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 images which it had commissioned, depicting Mohammed, the founder of Islam. The images had been requested as a Danish author, Kare Blultgen, reported that he could find no-one to illustrate a children's book he had written, on the life of Mohammed. Three artists who had been approached by the author were too scared to risk offending Muslim sensibilities.

Jyllands-Posten invited Danish artists to submit their illustrations of Mohammed, and twelve pictures were published. the issue was made worse when Abu Laban, a Palestinian-born cleric from Copenhagen, along with Ahmed Akkari travelled to the Middle East to incite anger against Denmark. As a result, in February, a month of global protests took place, with from 40 to 50 people killed.

On March 29, a coalition of seven Islamic groups decided to sue two of the leading figures in Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Lawyer Michael Christiani Havemann was hired to demand 100,000 kroner ($16,100) from the editor, Carsten Juste, and the paper's culture editor, Flemming Rose. Havemann had claimed that the drawings were "gratuitously defamatory and injurious". He also said: "According to my information, the grossest of the cartoons, the one with the bomb, was drawn by the paper's employed cartoonist, apparently on the instructions of management because the cartoons drawn by the freelance artists were not gross enough."

The lawyer's comments were to see him being named in a countersuit in May. Carsten Juste said in a statement that Havemann's allegations were "simply so gross and insulting that he has crossed the line for what we will accept. The cartoonists were explicitly asked to freely depict the Prophet Muhammad".

There were always issues about how the Muslim lawsuit could have succeeded within Danish legislation. Juste and Flemming were accused of being "racist", though Islam is a religion which has nothing to do with race. They were finally charged with libel against Muslims. Today, a court in Aarhus threw out the case. Earlier attempts to have the two editors charged with blasphemy and hate speech were also thrown out.

The news is found in almost 200 sources, including Copenhagen Post, the BBC, AKI, Reuters, Bloomberg and Deutsche Presse Agentur via Monsters & Critics.

The court ruling claimed: "Of course it cannot be excluded that the drawings offended some Muslims. But there is no sufficient reason to assume that the cartoons are or were intended to be insulting...or put forward ideas that could hurt the standing of Muslims in society."

The organisations which brought the suit were ordered to pay the defendants' court costs. They have said they will appeal to a higher court.

Carsten Juste said on the Jyllands-Posten website: "Anything but a clear acquittal would have been a catastrophe for freedom of the press and the media's ability to fulfil its role in a democratic society. You can think what you want about the cartoons, but the newspaper's unassailable right to print them has been set by both the country's prosecutors and the court system."

Kasem Said Ahmad, spokesman for the Islamic Society in Denmark, one of the seven groups who launched the case, said he was "disappointed', and could not understand a ruling which allowed "the feelings of minorities in Denmark to be hurt."

In Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami, which organized protests in February in which at least three people were killed, including a seven year old boy, was not happy. This Islamist party, which seeks to subjugate democratic law under sharia, said via its spokesman Ameer ul-Azeem: "This was expected because the values and culture of the West are different from Muslim countries."

Azeem said that Western courts "should listen to what Muslim scholars think. If they think these cartoons insult their religion and the prophet, the courts should respect these views. It is not up to the court to decide if Muslims will have hard feelings or not."

In the Arab world, attitudes to the court's verdict were similar. Mohammed Habash, head of the Islamic Studies Center in Damascus, Syria, said: "This will only widen the gap between the Western and Islamic world. The Western mentality still sees in such things a facet of freedom that should be defended. This reflects arrogance because they want to impose their way of thinking on all other nations."

Mahmoud al-Kharabsheh of the Jordanian parliament's legal committee said: "The Copenhagen court's ruling is not a judicial decision. It is a political decision that expresses the hatred of Islam and Muslims by the Danish government, its authorities and its judicial body. The dismissal of the lawsuit against the newspaper, which was expected, confirms the ongoing intention to harm our religion and our prophet."

In Lebanon, Radwan el-Sayyed, who teaches Islamic Studies, said the verdict was a "misinterpretation of freedom."

These individuals, like those who brought the defamation suit, show a total lack of understanding of Western judicial process and the cherished notions of freedom of expression.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 26, 2006 5:35 PM

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Posted by: Spipou at October 26, 2006 11:20 PM

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