In a recent interview in ABC, the author of the “Cartoon that shook the world” Jytte Klausen, had a discussion with Peter Mares regarding to the reaction towards the Danish newspaper who published cartoons that humiliate Islam and the reaction towards the 12 cartoonist responsible for the cartoon by countries with strong Islamic faith (ABC).
The cartoon indeed stirs anger and countless of hatred among the people with Islamic faith all over the world. People were protesting on the road, expressing their anger through demonstration outside Danish embassies around the world (Thompson, 2006). Most of them however, choose not to protest peacefully and instead threatens to take the lives of those responsible of mocking Prophet Muhammad and Islam faith (ABC). Besides that, the protest demonstration were even worse by using slogans that promotes violence to westerners as well as supporting Islamic terrorism act such as the September eleven attack on America. The examples of the slogans were “Massacre those who insult Islam”, “Europe you will pay” and “Europe you’ll come crawling when Mujahideen come roaring” (Kite, 2006).
Source: Limits to growthHowever, the violent protests were not supported by a few Muslim leaders. Mr Bukhari, the chairman of the Muslim Public Affair Committee finds the slogans during the protest disgusting, disgrace and Muslim do not feel that way (BBC, 2006). Besides that, fifty two American Islamic organization also strongly condemn the cartoons but they protest it peacefully and they also advice all Muslim around the world with the verse of their Prophet such as avoiding violence and not to attack a place of worship and civilians (Militant Islam Monitor, 2006).
In addition to that, the cartoons were all a misunderstanding between the cartoonists responsible and the radical angered Muslim as these cartoons had hidden messages instead of mocking Islamic faith. Klausen (cited by ABC) gave a very ironic example of a cartoonist who suffered the misunderstanding between him and the radical angered Muslim. In his cartoon, he drew Prophet Muhammad as a teenage boy with soccer shirt scribbling Arabic word on a board which was actually an attack to the newspaper. He even got a support of an Islamic friend who wrote the Arabic word on his cartoon but unfortunately, he was the first to receive a death threat.
In conclusion, anything that has been published will be misunderstanding if they are not edited carefully. Danish press is a very good example as it made a mistake by publishing out the cartoons that literary shook the world and in the end, resulted chaos that causes casualties of 450 people with just a misunderstanding (ABC).
Reference
ABC, "The cartoons that shook the world", ABC, last accessed 15 November 2010,
BBC, 2006, "Muslim leaders condemns protesters", BBC News, last accessed 15 November 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4676524.stm
Kite, M 2006, "Muslim protests are incitement to murder, says Torie", The Telegraph, last accessed 15 November 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1509664/Muslim-protests-are-incitement-to-murder-say-Tories.html
Militant Islam Monitor, 2006, "52 Muslim groups in the United States condemns cartoons as 'insult to Islam' warns Muslims of places 'not to attack'", Militant Islam Monitor, last accessed 15 November 2010, http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1670
Thompson, P 2006, "Hate demo over cartoon", The Sun, last accessed 15 November 2010, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article36799.ece
