When Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005, its editor, Flemming Rose, and his country, Denmark, found themselves at the center of a global battle about the freedom of speech. The “Cartoon Crisis” spiraled into a violent international uproar as Muslims around the world protested. Danish embassies were attacked and more than 200 deaths were attributed to the protests.

These cartoons ignited a wave of violent protests across the world, something no one could have anticipated. Suddenly you were being labelled an anti-Islamist and receiving death threats. Danish embassies were attacked and people were killed in resulting protests. What was the original purpose of the cartoons? What were you attempting to say in publishing them?

The cartoons didn’t come out of the blue. They were published for a reason. It began with a story about a children’s book about the life of the prophet Mohammed. The story ran on Denmark’s wire service in the middle of September 2005. The author said in the interview that he had difficulties finding an illustrator to depict Mohammed for fear of rebuke. This story caused a big debate in Denmark about self-censorship, and at my newspaper we had a discussion about follow-up stories. A reporter suggested that we invite artists to depict Mohammed and find out if self-censorship is a problem or not. Two weeks before I had been in touch with the chairman of Denmark’s Cartoonist Association, so I asked him if his members would contribute to the project.

At that time we were still not sure if the children’s writer spoke the truth about his troubles finding an illustrator, though it later was confirmed by his publisher. While we were having a debate inside the paper about publishing or not, two museums removed pieces of art thought to be offensive to Muslims without asking the artists, a publisher in Finland deleted a sentence considered offensive from a book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and several translators of the book insisted on anonymity due to fear. A stand-up comedian in Denmark acknowledged that he had no concerns mocking the Bible in