Lars Refn
It gets Curiouser and curiouser:
Lars Refn draws a young immigrant names "Muhammed" in a public school in Valby (part of Copenhagen). The text on the blackboard is in Persian and means (or so I'm told), "Jyllands-Posten's journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs."
Lars Refn is also on the death-list, so apparently it is also "illegal" to draw people, who are named Muhammed - or maybe it's illegal to insult Jyllands-Posten?
"Muhammed's" shirt is imprinted with the word "Fremtiden", which means "the future". Brave New World!
Added:The word "fremtiden" is split after "Frem". "Frem" is also the name of the local soccer club in Valby - and the red and blue stripes on the young boy's shirt are the official colours of the club. I have no idea whether you can buy a "Frem-tiden" shirt on their home page.
Added: Two things: (1) In some versions of Lars Refn's cartoon, an English text has been superimposed on the drawing, "We think Lars Refn is a coward, who does not understand the seriousness of the Muslim threat to free speech.". I have seen two sites so far, where it has been claimed - without any proof - that this text was added by the editors of Jyllands-Posten, who had desired a more offending picture.
*sigh* Sometimes I feel like the guy in the circus parade, who walks behind the elephants with a little broom and pail, but here goes:
- According to several sources, Jyllands-Posten did not know the meaning of the words on the black board. Here is but one Danish resource the Journalist (Danish text, my translation):
Several people on the newspaper have a good laugh, when it turns out that Lars Refn has written on his cartoon in Arabic that »Jyllands-Posten's editors are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs«.
Apparently nobody has noticed this before publication.
- Flemming Rose (culture editor) has time after time stated the opposite: (Why I published those cartoons): "I wrote to members of the association of Danish cartoonists asking them "to draw Muhammad as you see him." We certainly did not ask them to make fun of the prophet."
- In the original publication the drawing didn't have such a text (see image to the right). The text has been added later.
- Why on earth would a Danish editor write to his Danish readers in English?
(2) Innocent as the drawing is, Lars Refn was in fact one of the first to receive death threats. Normally the Security Intelligence Service won't leak any details, but an article in Ingeniøren from back in October, when a 17-year old boy issued death threats against two of the cartoonists tells us that Lars Refn were among the two.
I must repeat the question I asked in the original post: Is it illegal to draw a person named Mohammed? Or is it illegal to call Jyllands-Posten's editors and journalists a bunch of reactionary provocateurs?
