In response to a Muslim plot to murder a cartoonist, some Danish newspapers are reprinting those Mohammed cartoons.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Danish newspapers reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a gesture of solidarity Wednesday after police revealed a plot to kill the creator of the caricature that sparked deadly riots in the Muslim world.
Danish Muslims said they would seek to avoid a repeat of the violence two years ago — but with a rightwing Dutch lawmaker planning to air a movie that condemns Islam as fascist, Europe pondered the possibility of a new cycle of turmoil.
“I just don’t want go through this again,” said Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim educational group in London. Shafiq said he has written a protest letter to the Danish ambassador in London.
Other Muslim groups echoed his sentiments, saying they believed the Danish papers were seeking unnecessarily to rekindle the fiery debate over free speech and Islam that engulfed Europe during the uproar over the cartoons in 2006.
Some experts said that discussion never went away — it just drifted off the editorial pages of Europe’s dailies.