Danish Muslims are planning to take Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten daily to Europe’s highest human rights court over the publication of satirical drawings of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him).
"[Danish] Muslim organizations intend to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights,” Muslim leader Mohammed Khalid Samha told IslamOnline.net on Friday, June 20.
The move comes a day after a Danish court rejected a suit by seven Muslim groups against newspaper editors for publishing the offensive cartoons.
“We were quite sure that the Danish judiciary would not be fair to Muslims,” said Samha.
The High Court for western Denmark based in Aarhus upheld a court ruling that the Jyllands-Posten editors had not meant to depict Muslims as criminals or terrorists by publishing the cartoons.
It said although one of the cartoons, which depicts a man said to be the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, could have been seen as a representation of the Prophet as a violent man, the cartoon did not break the law.
“It is a known fact that acts of terror have been carried out in the name of Islam and it is not illegal to make satire out of this relationship,” the court said.
Thursday’s ruling was the fourth by Danish courts to reject legal charges against the daily.
In September 2005, Jyllands-Posten commissioned and printed 12 cartoons including portrayals of the Prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban and another showing him as a knife-wielding nomad flanked by shrouded women.
The drawings, considered blasphemous under Islam, have triggered massive and sometimes violent demonstrations across the Muslim world and strained the Muslim-West ties.
Denmark’s main dailies reprinted last February one of the lampooning cartoons.
Disappointing
Danish Muslim leaders described the court ruling as “disappointing”.
“We regret this ruling,” Mohammed Namah, media secretary for the Muslim Scandinavian Endowment, told IOL.
“This verdict reaffirms the feeling of many Danish Muslims that they are being threatened, insulted and targeted,” added Samha, the Muslim leader.
Bilal Assaad, Chairman of the Islamic Faith Society, one of several plaintiffs, also lamented the court ruling.
“I can’t say I’m surprised by the decision, but I’m disappointed,” Assaad told Reuters.
“We had hoped that we could put this unfortunate matter behind us and that the High Court would draw the line that establishes the limits of freedom of expression in religious matters.”
Denmark has a Muslim minority of nearly 200,000 out of its 5.4 million population.
Following the cartoons crisis, Muslims in Denmark and worldwide took many initiatives to remove widely circulated stereotypes about Islam in the West.
Danish Muslims established the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, a grouping of 27 Danish Muslim organizations, to raise awareness about the merits and characteristics of the Prophet.