Denmark’s Immigration Minister, Inger Støjberg, has shared a controversial image of the Prophet Mohammed in which the founder of Islam is drawn with a bomb fuse burning down towards his head.
The image, a screenshot of her iPad background, was shared by the immigration minister, Tuesday morning, in response to a decision by Denmark’s Skovgaard museum not to feature the controversial drawings in an upcoming exhibition on blasphemy in art since the Reformation.
Photo: Rune Evensen. Featured Photo (Homepage Image) : Carsten Seidel.
Part of a satirical collection by cartoonist Kurt Westergaards, the original cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten in 2005 set off riots across the Islamic world in which Danish embassies were destroyed and over 200 people killed during chaotic violence in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Citing the caricatures of Mohammed as a defining proof of Denmark’s commitment to freedom of expression and the right to say and criticize what one chooses, Støjberg wrote, Tuesday, that she was disappointed that the cartoons would not feature as part of the exhibition.
“It is the museum’s own choice, and they have their full right to do it, but I think it’s a shame’’, she wrote via her Facebook page next to a photo of the cartoon which she uses as a background on her iPad.
Speaking of her love for Denmark and of the freedom to speak – and draw – freely, the country’s immigration minister concluded, ‘’I believe, honestly, that we should be proud of these cartoons!’’
A member of Denmark’s center-right Venstre party, Støjberg has enacted numerous laws to prevent and discourage migrants from entering the country.
No stranger to triggering the left, she recently caused outrage amongst open borders advocates when she posted a smiling picture of herself with a large cake, celebrating her 50th immigration curbing measure.
Støjberg was also involved in the passing of a law requiring asylum seekers to declare and hand over jewelry and money above the value of 10,000 Danish Crowns ($1,500) to help pay for their stay in Denmark.
In March, she encouraged ordinary Danes to notify police if they suspected foreigners working in fast-food outlets to be in the country illegally.
The publication of the Mohammed cartoon by a government minister is no small matter, it should be noted – reproduction of the images is avoided by almost all European press for fear of reprisals;
In 2008, a plan by Islamic extremists to bomb Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper which originally featured the images, was thwarted by Danish police. Police also foiled a plot to murder the author of the cartoons, Kurt Westergaard, in the same year.
Two years later, Westergaard was the target of a failed assassination attempt in which a 28-year-old Somali Muslim broke into his home with an axe and a knife intent on retribution.
Unlike its northern neighbor, Sweden, Denmark has had a stricter position on immigration for some time, with government policy on the matter pushed to the right by the populist Danish People’s Party, founded in 1995 by Pia Kjærsgaard in response to decades of liberal immigration policy.
Given its geographic position between Germany and Sweden, however, the country has seen a large influx of migrants in recent years and increasing radicalization amongst its growing immigrant population, evident on the streets of Copenhagen and other large towns in the otherwise peaceful nation.
