{"id":21906,"date":"2010-09-09T20:30:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T18:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=21906"},"modified":"2014-01-05T20:45:01","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T18:45:01","slug":"merkel-honours-danish-muhammad-cartoonist-westergaard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/09\/09\/merkel-honours-danish-muhammad-cartoonist-westergaard\/","title":{"rendered":"Merkel honours Danish Muhammad cartoonist Westergaard"},"content":{"rendered":"

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad caused anger in 2006.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A depiction of Muhammad’s turban as a fused bomb sparked global outrage when it was published in Denmark.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Kurt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Presenting him with a press freedom award, Mrs Merkel said Mr Westergaard was entitled to draw his caricatures.<\/p>\n

“Europe is a place where a cartoonist is allowed to draw something like this,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We are talking here about the freedom of opinion and the freedom of the press,” Ms Merkel said at the ceremony in the German city of Potsdam.<\/p>\n

The offending cartoon – which led to a groundswell of Muslim anger in many countries around the world – was one of 12 first published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.<\/p>\n

‘Place of freedom’<\/p>\n

Mrs Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, added that German people clearly remembered the implications of a lack of freedom and should therefore cherish it.<\/p>\n

“It’s about whether in a Western society with its values he [Mr Westergaard] is allowed to publish his Muhammad cartoons, or not. Is he allowed to do it? Yes he is,” Ms Merkel said.<\/p>\n

She described Europe as a place that respects and values the freedom of belief and religion.<\/p>\n

Dozens of people died in violence that broke out in early 2006, months after Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons showing Muhammad in a variety of humorous or satirical situations. Muslims regard the depiction of the prophet as blasphemy.<\/p>\n

The M100 media prize committee praised Kurt Westergaard for what it said was his “courage” to defend democratic values despite threats of violence and death.<\/p>\n

Security was tight at Sanssouci palace in Potsdam where the cartoonist told reporters: “Maybe they will try to kill me and maybe they will have success, but they cannot kill the cartoon.”<\/p>\n

Speaking at the award ceremony Ms Merkel also described as “abhorrent” a plan by US pastor Terry Jones to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the 11 September terror attacks.<\/p>\n

She said she found the idea disrespectful and “simply wrong”.<\/p>\n

‘Risky decision’<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mrs Merkel’s decision to speak at the event about press freedom has caused some surprise in Germany.<\/p>\n

One newspaper said she was taking “a huge risk”.<\/p>\n

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that the effect of having a photograph taken with Kurt Westergaard was incalculable, describing it as “probably be the most explosive appointment of her chancellorship so far”.<\/p>\n

Germany’s Central Muslim Council (ZMD) criticised Ms Merkel for attending the award ceremony.<\/p>\n

A ZMD spokesman, Aiman Mazyek, told public broadcaster Deutschlandradio that the Chancellor was honouring someone “who in our eyes kicked our prophet, and therefore kicked all Muslims”.<\/p>\n

He said giving Mr Westergaard the prize in a “highly charged and heated time” was “highly problematic”.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks Germany has seen a highly charged debate over immigration, partly set off by the publication of a book by a board member of the German central bank, Thilo Sarrazin.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the book Mr Sarrazin, who is also a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) attacked what he describes as a failure of Muslims living in the Germany to integrate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad caused anger in 2006. A depiction of Muhammad’s turban as a fused bomb sparked global outrage when it was published in Denmark. Presenting him with a press freedom award, Mrs Merkel said Mr Westergaard was entitled to draw his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939,21,12,922],"tags":[3639,3640,3520,3641],"class_list":["post-21906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","category-eu-members","category-germany","category-world","tag-danish","tag-danish-cartoonist","tag-merkel","tag-westergaard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}