Danish Prophet cartoonist says has no regrets
AARHUS, Denmark (Reuters) - His satirical drawing of the Prophet Mohammad has changed his life, but Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has no regrets, despite the exposure of a plot to kill him.
Westergaard, 72, drew the cartoon that caused the most controversy in the Muslim world, depicting the founder of Islam with a bomb in his turban.
He said that, in the end, the cartoons could help serve to find a place for Islam in the West, where secular values sit uncomfortably with an Islamic view of society.
"I would do it the same way (again) because I think that this cartoon crisis in a way is a catalyst which is intensifying the adaptation of Islam," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, speaking in English.
"Without a cartoon that provoked the Muslims, it would have been something else; a novel a play, a movie, this situation would have occurred sooner or later anyway."
He said: "We are discussing the two cultures, the two religions as never before and that is important."
Westergaard's cartoon and 11 others were first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005. Other papers reprinted them in 2006, enraging some in the Muslim world who saw the depiction of the Prophet as blasphemous.
More than 50 people were killed in protests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
MURDER PLOT
Last month, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) arrested three men, one Dane and two Tunisians, on suspicion of planning to kill the artist.
At least 15 Danish papers and several foreign papers have since reprinted the caricature, sparking a new wave of protests.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden last week warned that Europe would be punished for the cartoons.
Westergaard, who still works full-time, said he believed he would have to live the rest of his life under the cloud of violence and would have to make the best of the situation.
"When there is no way out, you get braver and you want to resist so my basic feeling in this situation has been and is anger. I am angry that I am being threatened. I have just done my job," told Reuters at the offices of his paper Jyllands-Posten in Aarhus, Denmark's second city.
The cartoonist said he appreciated the reprinting of his drawing as a show of solidarity to the threat against freedom of speech and the murder plot. Continued...
