The Jyllands-Posten Cartoons

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten created the furor over depictions of Mohammed by publishing a series of 12 drawings after a local author said he was unable to find any artist willing to depict Mohammed for his upcoming illustrated book. The publication of the images in Jyllands-Posten has been condemned around the Islamic world, and has led to calls for a boycott of Denmark by Muslim nations.

Here are the Jyllands-Posten drawings, for the record:

This is what the original Jyllands-Posten page looked like.

Notice that there were only 12 cartoons.

Yet when a delegation of Danish imams went to the Middle East to "discuss" the issue of the cartoons with senior officials and prominent Islamic scholars, the imams openly distributed a booklet that showed 15 images -- not only the original 12 cartoons, but three fraudulent anti-Mohammed depictions that were much more offensive than the ones published in Denmark.

It is now thought that these three bonus images are what ignited the outrage in the Muslim world. The newspaper Ekstra Bladet obtained a copy of the booklet and presented the three offensive images on its Web site - though not in an easy-to-find place. All look like low-quality photocopies. Also this Web site has all 38 pages of the booklet.

While people across the Middle East are rioting over the publication of the 12 cartoons in European papers, no one seems to have minded that the cartoons were printed last fall in an Egyptian paper as well (click image right).

The entire controversy started when Danish author Kåre Bluitgen complained that he could not find an artist brave enough to illustrate his upcoming book about Mohammed. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten issued a call for submissions from any artists willing to take up the challenge. In the ensuing brouhaha, the original book was almost forgotten; it has now been released, and does feature page after page of Mohammed depictions. This site features scans of several of the pages.

This image above, taken from the book (titled Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv, or The Koran and the life of the prophet Mohammed), apparently shows Mohammed with his child-bride Aisha. This Danish blog also has some information about the release of the book.

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