Yale University Press is working on publishing a book by Jytte Klausen, a Danish born professor of politics at BrandeisUniversity called “The Cartoons That Shook the World.” Yet a notoriously famous earth-shaking cartoon will not be included.
In September 2005, 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which included one picture of Muhammad donning a bomb shaped turban, were published by a Danish newspaper, sparking violent protests in the Middle East and Africa that left 200 dead. After consulting dozens of diplomats, scholars, and experts, Yale University Press decided not to include the Danish cartoons, along with other illustrations of the prophet that appear in various printed historic material.
The decision not to print images of the prophet was, according to John Donatich, director of Yale University Press, as reported by The New York Times, “overwhelming and unanimous” by a Yale voting board. Despite criticism from Klausen and religious scholar Reza Aslan, Donatich based his ruling on the violence surrounding the printing of the Danish cartoons. Quoting Ibrahim Gambari, special adviser to the secretary general of the United Nations and an expert consulted over the controversy, Donatich said, according to the Times “You can count on violence if any illustration of the prophet is published. It will cause riots, I predict, from Indonesia to Nigeria.”
Last year, Danish police arrested three men who they suspected of plotting to kill the artist who drew the Danish cartoon of Muhammad with the bomb shaped turban.
