21st
Dutch politician Geert Wilders should definitely
air his anti-Quranfilm, Danish cartoonist Kurt
Westergaard says Monday in an
exclusive interview
in the Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’.
Westergaard says he does not understand
Dutch politicians who say that Wilders should not air
his film. ‘There is not a single politician in Denmark
that would state a similar thing. That would mean
political suicide for him. Every Danish politician knows
you should never limit the freedom of speech.’
Westergaard does not regret his
caricatures of the prophet Muhammad ‘at all’. ‘It
started out as and still is a matter of freedom of
speech.’ Westergaard considers starting this debate as a
‘duty’ of newspapers and cartoonists. ‘Muslims are to
accept that.’
Extremist
The Danish cartoonist loathes the role of
members of the Muslim elite, because they compare him to
‘an extremist like Osama bin Laden’. Westergaard: ‘After
the nazis, fascists and communists there is a new
totalitarian force threathening Europe, of course not
Muslims as a group, but a number of extremists’.
Westergaard considers his cartoons
perfectly acceptable and thinks ‘everything’ should be
able to be said in democracies as Denmark and the
Netherlands. If Muslims feel offended by that, they
should ‘learn’ to cope with that. ‘We live in a tolerant
society. This is the way we do this here.’
Shelter
Death threats have forced Westergaard to
live in safe houses. He will soon be moving to a new
shelter for the sixth time. He was first criticized
after he had drawn a picture of the prophet Muhammed
wearing a bomb-shaped turban for the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten. His caricatures were recently
republished by several newspapers in Denmark. Three men
plotting an attack on his life were arrested mid
February.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders also
receives death threats from radical Muslims because of
his extreme criticism on islam. The Dutch Prime minister
as well as politicians from outside the Netherlands,
have put pressure on Wilders in the past weeks to
reconsider his plan to air his anti-Quran film in late
March. Wilders has refused all requests.
More than 200 thousand people
demonstrated against the Danish cartoons and the Dutch
film of Wilders in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on
Sunday. ‘Death to Denmark, death to the Nederlands’, the
crowd shouted. In the past few weeks there have been
many demonstrations against the cartoons and the film in
other cities of Afghanistan and other Muslim countries.
Read interview:
'A totalitarian power threatens us in
Europe'
