Tajikistan has urged the United Nations to take measures to stop a Norwegian firm from republishing a book containing cartoons satirizing the Muslim prophet Muhammad that set off global turmoil in 2005.
A letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “expresses anxiety over the fact that the Norwegian printing press Cappelen Damm plans to republish the book Tyranny of Silence in May 2011,” the Tajik Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “This book contains cartoons that blaspheme the name of the Islamic prophet.”
Tajikistan, which currently presides in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, had the text of the letter approved by all the other 56 member states of the OIC.
The 12 cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005 first sparked protests in the Danish Muslim community, and were then condemned at an OIC summit in December 2005 and set off mass anti-Danish demonstrations in Muslim countries resulting in numerous fatalities.
Tajikistan sent a copy of the letter to UN General Assembly President Joseph Deiss.