Danish daily Politiken on Friday apologized to Muslims for possibly offending them by reproducing cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in 2008, but said it did not regret publishing the drawings.
“We apologise to anyone who was offended by our decision to reprint the cartoon drawing,” the newspaper said in a statement.
Politiken is the first Danish newspaper to formally apologize to those who may have resented the publication of the cartoons. On Friday, it published an agreement reached with eight organizations from Australia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories representing 94,923 descendants of the Muslim prophet. In the agreement Politiken said it regretted if it had insulted Muslims’ faith, but that it did not regret publishing the drawings and that it did not renounce the right to publish the controversial drawings again.
The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Toeger Seindenfaden, said he was happy with the outcome.
“We deplore that Muslims were offended even if that was not our intention,” he told reporters.
Friday’s agreement emerged from an Aug. 28 request made by a Saudi lawyer, Faisal Ahmed Zaki Yamani, to 11 Danish newspapers.
He had asked the newspapers to apologize, promise they would not republish the drawings, and remove the controversial cartoons from their Web sites.
Politiken’s apology was widely condemned by Danish politicians, who charged that the paper had caved in to pressure and had sacrificed freedom of expression, which is considered a cornerstone of Danish democracy.
A number of other Danish newspapers also condemned the apology, but said they would not republish the cartoons.
Jyllands-Posten, which first published the 12 caricatures of Mohammed in September 2005, blasted Politiken’s decision.
“It’s a sad day for Danish media, it’s sad for freedom of expression and it’s sad for Politiken,” Jyllands-Posten chief editor Joern Mikkelsen wrote.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said he refused to get involved, citing “the freedom of expression and respect for editorial decisions.” He did, however, tell TV2 news he was concerned that the apology could be seen as “a break with the cohesion that existed in the media and in Danish society.”
The cartoons, including one that featured Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse, angered many Muslims worldwide and sparked angry protests in January and February 2006.
The protests culminated with the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in Damascus and Beirut and the death of dozens of people in Nigeria.
In 2008, around 20 Danish newspapers, including Politiken, reproduced the drawings following a failed attack against one of the cartoonists, sparking further protests in a number of Muslim countries, including Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS