Guilt and the 'Innocence of Muslims'

We tend to forget that it was in September 2005 that the editors of Jyllands-Posten first published a series of cartoons satirizing not just the Prophet Muhammad but the cultural hypocrisy that attends that any debate about freedom of speech where Islam is concerned. This collective amnesia is understandable and owes to the fact that a handful of Danes, some of whom also poked fun at their own self-conscious provocation, managed to avoid a global controversy until January 2006, almost four months on from the cartoons’ original publication. It was only then that European legations and non-Danish fast food joints were firebombed or stormed and boycotts of Danish consumer products were imposed across the Middle East. Never had Lego blocks seemed so polarizing.