The publication in 2005 by a Danish newspaper of controversial drawings representing the Prophet Mohammed was just the beginning of outrage in the Muslim world, with France now the target of a new wave of anger.
A timeline:
– Danish cartoons –
In September 2005, the conservative Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes 12 drawings under the headline “The Face of Mohammed”.
Muslim religious convention forbids visual depictions of the prophet, which are seen as idolatry and thus blasphemous.
The most infamous of the drawings is one by Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, which shows the prophet concealing a bomb inside a turban.
Muslim officials demand an apology from Denmark and Muslims demonstrate in Copenhagen in their thousands.
In early 2006, Saudi Arabia recallz its ambassador to Copenhagen and a boycott of Danish products spreads through the Arab world.
Several Danish websites are targeted by hackers.
– Global controversy –
Several European newspapers, including Norwegian Christian newspaper Magazinet and the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris also run the drawings, in the name of freedom of expression. The controversy goes global.
In Gaza, armed groups threaten to vent their rage on Western journalists. In Beirut, Damascus and Tehran, in Indonesia, Somalia, Nigeria and Afghanistan, violent demonstrations, attacks and torchings of European embassies leave dozens of people dead.
In February 2008, after a period of calm, the re-publication by 17 Danish newspapers of the most controversial cartoon after a failed attack on its artist revives anger in numerous Muslim countries.
– Attacks –
In June 2008, a suicide attack claimed by Al-Qaeda against the Danish embassy in Islamabad leaves six dead.
In 2010, Danish police catch a 28-year-old Somali armed with a knife in the artist Westergaard’s house.
In February 2015, Danish-born Omar El-Hussein shoots dead a filmmaker outside a free speech event attended by Swedish artist Lars Vilks — who in 2007 portrayed the Prophet Mohammed as a dog — hours before killing a Jewish man outside a synagogue.
In May 2015 in the United States police shoot dead two armed men who opened fire in Texas near to a centre hosting a competition of Mohammed cartoons.
One of the invitees is the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, who had made a film in 2008 linking terrorism and Islam.
– Attack on Charlie Hebdo –
In November 2011, an arson attack targets the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, in response to its edition renamed “Charia (Sharia) Hebdo” with the prophet caricatured on the cover.
Then on January 7, 2015, two French jihadists kill 12 people, including five artists, at the weekly’s offices. The attackers are shot by police on their third day on the run.
The publication a week later of a Charlie Hebdo editionfeaturing a drawing of the prophet on its cover sparks violent demonstrations around the Muslim world, during which 10 die in Niger.
In September 2020, as the trial of suspected accomplices in the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo opens, the paper republishes the caricatures, to the ire of several Muslim states. Al-Qaeda again threatens to attack its editorial staff.
Three weeks into the trial, a man armed with a knife seriously wounds two people outside Charlie Hebdo’s former offices.
– Anger at France –
On October 16, French school teacher Samuel Paty is beheaded by a Chechen extremist in a Paris suburb after showing his pupils some of the Mohammed cartoons during a lesson on freedom of expression.
President Emmanuel Macron responds by issuing a passionate defence of free speech, vowing that the country “will not give up cartoons”.
The declaration, and Macron’s unveiling of a plan to defend France’s secular values against a trend of “Islamist separatism”, prompt an angry reaction from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He says Muslims in Europe are subject to a “lynch campaign” and calls for a boycott of French goods. In several Gulf states, French products have been taken off the shelves.
Macron is vilified by protesters in Bangladesh, Pakistan, in rebel zones in Syria, in the Gaza Strip and in Libya.
