Danish Newspaper Wins Mohammad Cartoon Lawsuit

A Lower Danish Court has ruled Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper did not libel Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in 2005. When the court dismissed the Seven Danish Muslim organizations who had filed the lawsuit have been ordered to pay all court costs associated with the case, however they have indicated they will file an appeal. The plaintiffs had sought 100,000 Danish kroner (roughly $16,000) in damages.



It should be noted that less than two hours after this story first broke one or two groups in Pakistan have already started to protest this ruling. Why is that; is it perhaps a coordinated attempt to keep the cartoon controversy going, while hoping more Muslims will turn against the Western World or heaven forbid have some kill Westerners as they did last Year?




[edit on 10/26/2006 by shots]

Great judgmental decision. I must say I didn't really like the cartoons (found them disturbing and insulting), yet the same applies for the Iranian cartoons about Jews... However, we are still enjoying freedom of expression, which should in no way be limited.

Going to court is a much better solution than running around on the streets and burning Danish flags. But hey, the Danish Imam did not have any other intentions than increasing tensions between the West and the Muslim community.

If you don't like our freedom of expression just move to where you come from, you cannot have both. Or you agree with our Democratic principles or you move to never come back.

In the country I live we had a debate similar to the Danish, a Muslim woman wearing a Burqa applied for a job as teacher of an infant school, they didn't give her the job because of her Burqa. She sued the administration for being racists. I am very sorry, but if I had children (I'm still a student) I would never send me children to an infant school where a woman wearing a Burqa would be teaching.

This would scare most children (in Western societies I might add):


Some supportive information:

Akkari and his group traveled together to Cairo, where they visited Al-Azhar University, which has a reputation for building bridges between Egypt and Europe. Akkari said he wanted to draw attention to the racist climate in order to prevent a repeat of the Theo Van Gogh drama in the Netherlands. In November 2004, a radical Islamist murdered Van Gogh, motivated by the filmmaker's criticism of Muslims.

Kaare Quist, a journalist at the Danish daily Ekstra Bladet, who has been reporting on the story for a number of weeks, says the group found a number of highly placed officials in the Arab World keen to listen to its message. Quist told SPIEGEL ONLINE they included representatives of the Arab League, Egypt's grand mufti and other high-level officials. The trip the group made, Quist believes, helped to raise attention to the political cartoons in Jyllands-Posten and prejudices against Denmark's Muslims. some 270,000 of Denmark's 5.4 million population are Muslim, making up 5 percent of the population.

Source

[edit on 26-10-2006 by Mdv2]