mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Two Three of Sweden’s largest daily newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and a local daily, today published one of Lars Vilks’ controversial Modog cartoons in the wake of the recent “Jihad Jane” assassination plot.

In its editorial, Dagens Nyheter said,

A threat against him is, in the end, a threat against all Swedish people.

Expressen made similar noises:

[…[ to defend freedom of expression which is more and more threatened”.

An open society must show that it will not give in to threats, that it is ready to fight for freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, Vilks himself remains as composed as ever.

I’m not shaking with fear, exactly.

UPDATE: (12 March) A Vilks Modog has also been shown on Swedish TV channel STV.

Four men and three women have been arrested in Ireland over a plot to kill Lars Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist who drew pictures of dogs with the head of Mohammed.

Vilks had a $100,000 bounty put on his head in 2007 by mythical al-Qaida leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. An extra 50% was offered if he was “slaughtered like a pig” by having his throat cut.

According to The Independent report, some of the seven are Muslim converts.

The BBC, with impeccable impartiality, points out that it is only media reports which state that the arrested are Muslims

though a police statement did not confirm this.

Well, it’s true – they could be Mormons. Or dog lovers.

UPDATE: (14 March) Four have been released.

The Local reports that the Swedish postal service and a private distributor have refused to deliver a party newspaper because it contains a copy of Lars Vilks’ Modog.

The far-right Sweden Democrats wanted to post their SD-Kuriren in the southern town of Svedala, but the post office decided it posed a security risk. A spokesman for Posten said:

We want to protect the safety of our mail carriers. This illustration has provoked reactions that have led to death threatsv

Now the marketing company Svensk Direktreklam have also refused to deliver the newspaper, although they were less frank about their reasons. They stated that they would only distribute material from Sweden’s current parliamentary parties.

Yeah, right.

Swedish electro-pop band Neurobash have agreed to work alongside Lars Vilks to produce a musical based on the Modog affair (see below).

Vilks will provide the text and Neurobash the music. According to the band’s website, there are about ten artists involved in the project so far. They plan to release it in the first half of 2008.

Daniel the keyboard player explains:

This is really a debate about democracy and censorship of art. We think these are important themes to discuss, hence we have accepted to contribute to the forthcoming musical

Sweden’s Chancellor of Justice has ruled that Lars Vilks’ Modog cartoon, published in Nerikes Allehanda in August, did not constitute incitement to racial hatred. This is in accordance with MWW prophecy.

Three Swedish Muslim organisation had asked Chancellor Goeran Lambertz to press charges. He responded:

Neither the article nor the sketch, which has a satirical tone, expresses contempt against any ethnic group.

While many practicing Muslims may perceive primarily the cartoon as offensive, neither the content of the article nor the cartoon can be considered as crossing the line of what is permissible within the freedom of the press. The justice chancellor will therefore not pursue the matter.

A woman has been arrested for threatening the MoDog artist, Lars Vilks.

Vilks himself has spoken out bullishly about his cartoons, saying he was trying to force a proper discussion:

We must be free to criticise religions. Why should Islam be exempted from the sort of criticism that is commonplace for Judaism and Christianity?

He asked, pointedly, before issuing a challenge to Swedish Muslims:

Above all this is about how Swedish Muslims handle this, whether they are ready to step forward as representatives of democracy.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt has called a meeting with ambassadors from all 20 Muslim countries. This is in stark contrast with the Danish premier’s reaction in 2006 when he refused to meet delegates on the subject.

However, it is likely that Reinfeldt will stick to his free-expression guns, which won’t go down well with the diplomats who have agreed on presenting a list of “demands” at Friday’s meeting. It will be interesting to see their reactions when their demands are brushed aside.

The drawings have been reproduced in three Danish newspapers so far.

(Hat tip The Comics Reporter)

UPDATE: (7th Sept) The Local reports that the woman arrested has explained why she sent the death threat. Apparently, “her beliefs and convictions had been desecrated and attacked”. Poor thing. No wonder.

A “roundabout dog” sculpture by Lars Vilks was torched last night. Nobody has been arrested.

The redoubtable Mr Vilks has also said he is considering building an actual sculpture of his cartoon: a 3D Mo with a dog’s body.

Swedish Muslims demonstrated on Friday against a small local paper which published a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed.

On August 18 Nerikes Allehanda printed the cartoon by Lars Vilks as part of an editorial piece protesting the lack of art galleries willing to show such work. The image is based on the odd Swedish phenomenon known as “roundabout dogs“.

Iran was the first Muslim government to officially protest to the Swedish government. Predictably, president Ahmadinejad claimed that it was all a Zionist conspiracy:

They do not want the Swedish government to be a friend of other nations. I strongly believe they are behind it (the cartoon). They thrive on conflict and war.

The Pakistan government was next, summoning the Swedish ambassador to condemn the publication “in the strongest terms”. The official statement said:

Regrettably, the tendency among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims in the world is on the rise. In the past also sketches and caricatures of this nature have been published in Europe in the name of the ‘freedom of expression’. Such acts deeply undermine the efforts of those who seek to promote respect and understanding among religions and civilizations.

The statement also claimed that the Swedish Charge d’Affaires “fully shared the views of the Muslim community” – a claim denied by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

Indeed the Swedish government, media, and the newspaper in question have been very clear that no apology will be forthcoming. On the day of the protest Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt spoke out on the issue:

I think it’s important to say two things. First, we are eager to ensure that Sweden remains a country in which Muslims and Christians, people who believe in God and people who don’t believe in God, can live side by side in a spirit of mutual respect.[…]
We are also eager to stand up for freedom of expression, which is enshrined in the constitution and comes naturally to us, and which ensures that we do not make political decisions about what gets published in the newspapers. I want to make sure we keep things that way.

The editor of Nerikes Allehanda, Ulf Johansson, has steadfastly refused to apologise or promise never to publish a similar image. His editorial writer, Lars Ströman, wrote a robust defence of his boss’s decision:

A liberal society must be able to do two things at the same time. On the one hand, it must be able to defend Muslims’ right to freedom of religion and their right to build mosques. However, on the other hand, it is also permissible to ridicule Islam’s most foremost symbols – just like all other religions’ symbols. There is no opposition between these two goals. In fact, it is even the case that they presuppose each other.

Unfortunately, this basic message does not seem to be getting through. Today, the leader of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, displayed his total lack of comprehension when he urged the Swedish government to apologise immediately:

The caricatures in question do not bode well for freedom of expression. […] It has become a habit to insult our sacred values now. It is impossible to tolerate what has been done and what has been done cannot be considered a simple incident. […]

Those who are responsible cannot hide behind the principle of freedom of press. Those who remain silent in the face of attacks against Islam may not find anyone by their side when it comes to their sacred values.

Now Egypt and Jordan have joined Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan in voicing their protest. The Egyptian ministry said the publication was “irresponsible and offensive” and “not conducive to friendly ties between the Islamic world and the west”. And a Jordanian government spokesman said:

The publication of this cartoon, which seeks to attack the character of the Prophet Muhammad, is unacceptable, rejected and condemned.

Such cartoons do not serve inter-faith dialogue and co-existence, in which Jordan believes.

And, of course, the artist has been getting death threats.

UPDATE: (Sept 4) Turkey’s Felicity Party demonstrated outside the Swedish embassy in Ankara today, demanding “immediate action”.

Lars Vilks, the Modoggie artist whose free-speech lecture was so rudely interrupted last May, has been invited back to Uppsala university for a second attempt to complete his talk.

Folke Tersman, the head of the university’s philosophy department, says:

That a university lecture is interrupted by violence is a serious thing, regardless of the opinion that provoked the reaction… It is incompatible with the basic values democracy is based on. It is to uphold these values that we are inviting him again.

This is what happened the first time:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTWbY5PNnJU&feature=fvst[/youtube]

Breaking news of an arson attempt on Modoggie artist Larks Vilks’ house. Document.no is our only source at the moment, and the translation is fuzzy, but it appears that Vilks not at home when a window was smashed and petrol poured into the room.

This comes in the same week as the assault on him at a lecture (see below).

Reuters has the English story.

The Swedish artist famous for his Modoggie drawings has been headbutted while giving a lecture on freedom of speech in Uppsala University.

A local newspaper reported rather prissily that “the atmosphere in the lecture theatre became rowdy after Vilks showed a film with sexual content.” In fact, if you watch the video of the event (now gone), it is clear that the flashpoint occurred when Vilks showed some pictures from Soora Hera’s “Allah-o-gaybar” series (blogged here), depicting two half naked men wearing Mo-masks.

The lecture was obviously attended by a few idiots waiting for the opportunity to kick off, which they duly did at the first opportunity. The video shows that man who attacked Vilks was not the only violent one.

Fortunately, the artist was not injured.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdyKmzEdHws[/youtube]

UPDATE: (12 May) According to The Washington Post Vilks now acknowledges that he was not headbutted by a protestor, but accidentally collided with a security officer who leapt to defend him from his would-be attacker. Three people were arrested over the incident.

Vilks remains commendably defiant:

What you get is a mob deciding what can be discussed at the university. […] I’m ready to go up again. This must be carried through. You cannot allow it to be stopped.