Hervik, Peter, and Carolina Boe. ‘Integration through Ridicule?’ Transnational Media Events: The Mohammed Cartoons & the Imagined Clash of Civilizations, Eds. Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius, and Angela Phillips, Göteborg: Nordiskt Informationscenter for, 2008.
Excerpt from introduction:
When the now infamous cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad were published by Denmark’s most powerful newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten,2 the culture editor Flemming Rose wrote that they were deliberately intended “to insult, mock and ridicule” Muslims in Denmark. During the last decade, Jyl-lands-Posten has regularly argued that too much consideration is being shown towards religious feelings and that overt criticism, derogatory comments and ridicule are necessary provocations to accelerate social integration. This is the claim made by Flemming Rose in the above quotation from Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As such, Jyllands-Posten not only asserts its right to publish – it argues that publishing is a duty. The cartoons were published September 30, 2005. Eight months later, Rose justified his act as one of inclusion of Muslims in Denmark, arguing that he had meant to “integrate” “Them” “into the Danish tradition of satire” by “treating them like anyone else”: