Danish Free Speech Group to Sell Mohammed Cartoon

A Danish press freedom group said Wednesday it is selling copies of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that caused outrage across the Muslim World.

Some 1,000 printed reproductions of a drawing depicting the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban are being sold for $250 each, said Lars Hedegaard, chairman of the Danish Free Press Society.

“All we are doing is starting a debate,” Hedegaard said. “We are using our freedom of speech.”

Hedegaard said Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the cartoon in 2005, had given the society permission to produce the copies and sell them. Each numbered copy has been signed by Westergaard, Hedegaard said.

“We have not, and are not, breaking any laws,” Hedegaard told The Associated Press.

Westergaard has been living under police protection since an alleged plot to murder him was discovered last year.

Twelve cartoons depicting the prophet, including the one by Westergaard, were published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005.

The following year, they triggered massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia, with rioters torching Danish and other Western diplomatic missions. Some Muslim countries boycotted Danish products.

Note, there has been NO publication of these cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in most of America’s mainstream newspapers.

Flap wonders if there will be renewed rioting or Danish Embassy bombing since Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen distanced himself from the cartoons.

Stay tuned…..