Magic Statistics

Children's author Kåre Bluitgen couldn't find anyone willing to illustrate his book The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Muhammad. So, in a challenge to what it perceived as self-censorship, Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten commissioned and published twelve cartoons of Mohammed. Since then, mass demonstrations have been organised, embassies burned, people killed; and Mr Bluitgen has received at least one death threat. His book, however, is doing very well, thank you.

Mr Bluitgen’s publishers, Host and Sons, originally printed only 2,000 copies. But they have sold 6,000 copies since it was published on January 24. The 272-page volume, which costs 250 kroner (£23), has also attracted the attention of foreign publishers.

The book has received mixed reviews.

Critics gave the thumbs-up to the book's faithful use of historic sources, praising the storyline and speech, but were not so congratulatory about his portrayal of Muhammad. Indeed, Bluitgen's Prophet is a violent warlord, intent on spreading the Islamic faith through the Arabic world. Also included are gruesome descriptions of war scenes and the Prophet's marriage to a nine-year-old girl, which some critics say portrays Muhammad as a paedophile.
. . .
[Responds Bluitgen,] I don't agree with critics who say I've portrayed him to be a paedophile. You were allowed to marry a nine-year-old at that time. Muslims are very proud today that he married her - she ends up being his favourite wife and she is still the most well-known Muslim woman today. We have to be careful not to condemn historical people with our western eyes. By using the word 'paedophile', you've already put a negative label on it. But from a historical viewpoint, there wasn't anything wrong with the marriage.

Nevertheless, Mr Bluitgen and his book are now embroiled in the raging controversy. His face has been seen on demonstrators' placards. A Danish imam and some Saudi newspapers claim the book misrepresents and attacks Islam, charges the author rejects.

Eleven illustrations from the book are posted here.

Glenn Penner, Communications Director of The Voice of the Martyrs, says the violent reaction to the twelve cartoons proves the point the Danish newspaper was trying to make when it printed them.

Make no mistake; these cartoons were not published to spread hatred or intolerance. They were printed to demonstrate that Muslim intolerance threatens the freedoms we value. The violent protest that we have witnessed in the past few days is clear evidence that the danger of self-censorship because of fear (which the Jyllands-Posten wanted to stand against) is entirely justified.

Among the items in this week's Prayer and Persecution Alert from VOM Canada is a request for prayer for the families of Filipinos injured and murdered for confessing Christ. Several gunmen, believed to belong to the Islamist group Abu Sayyaf, went door to door in a village on the island of Jolo, shooting residents who said they were Christians. At least six were killed, including an infant girl, and five others wounded.

Alan Coren, editor of Punch from 1977 to 1987, now columnist for The Times of London, reminisces about the days when he selected cartoons for publication.

I never permitted issues of taste, propriety or sensitivity to interfere. If a cartoon about disability or Auschwitz, Calvary or impotence, cancer or Hiroshima, made me laugh, I bought it.

So, what does he think about the now-infamous twelve cartoons of you-know-who?

[T]he crux, if that isn’t too inappropriate a word, of the current crisis is that the cartoons of the Prophet were so ill-conceived, so ill-drawn and so unfunny. That, we have seen, has been the curious thrust of the complaints, not from understandably outraged Muslims, but from those who have sought to slag off the Danish cartoonists and editors responsible. I say curious, because the begged question cries out to be unbegged: suppose they had been funny? Not to us infidels, we don’t matter, but to Muslims.

He can feel the dagger at his throat even as he asks the question.

Mr Coren also admits that he laughed at that tacky cartoon posted at an Islamic website yesterday showing Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. Well, what do you expect? He's a humourist.

Sign at Tantalus Campground, Carmacks, Yukon, as seen last summer. (A friend passed it on me yesterday.)