DUSHANBE, May 5, 2011, Asia-Plus — The Permanent Mission of Tajikistan to the United Nations expresses concern about intention of Norwegian publishing-house, Cappelen Damm, to reprint “The Tyranny of Silence” by Flemming Rose this month.
According to the Tajik MFA information department, Tajikistan’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations recently sent a letter on this subject to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN General Assembly President Joseph Deiss.
“In its letter, Tajikistan’s Permanent Mission calls on them to take measures against that plan of the Norwegian publishing house,” said the source, “The text of letter was coordinated with ambassadors representing the Member Nations of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to the United Nations.”
“The Tyranny of Silence” by Flemming Rose, the man responsible for the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad Cartoon Crisis, was published in Denmark on September 30, 2010. Controversial political cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were reprinted in the book.
According to CNN, Rose told reporters on September 29, “I will also say to Muslims out there that by reproducing this page I did not intend to offend or insult anybody…Those cartoons are part of history.” “My modest ambition is to try to explain myself, because what I have experienced over the past five years is that there is a big gap between the way I perceive myself and the way I see a lot of people look at me. I am not a confrontational person by nature. I am not a provocateur. I am eager to talk and listen to people with whom I disagree.”
Jyllands-Posten first published the drawings by cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in September 2005. Some Muslims believe the Quran forbids showing an image of the prophet, and the cartoons provoked further ire because they depicted the prophet wearing a bomb as a turban with a lit fuse.
Westergaard said he wanted his cartoon to show how some people exploited the prophet to legitimize terror. Many in the Muslim world, however, felt the drawing simply depicted their prophet as a terrorist.
Other newspapers around the world reprinted the cartoons in early 2006, prompting international demonstrations, some of them fatal.
Many protesters directed their anger at Denmark, prompting the closure of several Danish embassies in predominantly Muslim countries.
