- You are sort of at the epicenter of everything
that our current free speech battle is all about.
So I guess I'm going to give you an open, easy question to start:
how did you end up in the middle of
this battle?
- Well, you know, I didn't choose this fight.
It was imposed upon me 11 years ago, when I was the editor
responsible for the publication of the so-called
Danish Muhammad cartoons.
They didn't come out of the blue,
as some people sometimes think.
They were published as a response to an ongoing
conversation in Denmark and Western Europe about the
problem of self-censorship when it comes to treating Islam.
And back then I think I was pondering two questions.
Is self-censorship taking place when it comes to dealing
with Islam?
Do we make a difference between Islam and other religions
and ideologies?
Question number one.
And question number two, if there is self-censorship,
is that self-censorship based in reality?
Or is it just the consequence of a sick imagination,
not based in reality?
Is the fear real or is it fake?
So 11 years later, I think we can say for sure,
the answer to both questions is yes.
There is self-censorship and the self-censorship is based in
reality because people were killed in Paris.
I live with body guards 24/7 when I'm back home in Denmark.
So it is a real problem.
- Yeah, it's so interesting to me that 11 years ago,
2005, you were addressing the idea of self-censorship
because that's obviously different than what we have here
with the First Amendment where the government can't
censor us. Because my awakening over the last couple years
about this has been about the self-censorship part.
That we are doing it to ourselves.
So just to back up to the specifics of what happened,
you guys solicited cartoons from people, right?
- Yes, I did, yes.
- So tell me about that process.
- It started with a children's book.
A Danish writer was writing a book about the life
of the Prophet Muhammad.
In Denmark when you publish a children's book,
you need illustrations of the main character.
I suppose you do the same here.
- Same here!
That goes across borders, yeah.
- And it turned out that the writer had difficulties
finding an illustrator who wanted to take on the job.
And he went public saying, you know,
"I've written this book, but I had difficulties finding
"an illustrator because of fear."
And the guy who finally took on the job insisted on
anonymity, which is a form of self-censorship.
You do not want to appear under your real name because you
are afraid of what might happen to you.
And, in fact, this illustrator later acknowledged
that he insisted on anonymity because he was afraid.
And he made a reference to the fate of Theo van Gogh,
a Dutch filmmaker who was killed in 2004 because of a
documentary he did that was critical of Islam.
- Who then many people know the note to Ayann Hirsi Ali,
who I think is one of the greatest people on planet earth,
saying that they were coming after her next.
- And the second individual was Salman Rushdie,
who in 1989 was the object of a fatwa by
Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and had to live in hiding
for many years.
So that was the context.
And some people were saying, "Oh this was just a media
"stunt by this children's writer to sell more books."
Other people were saying, "No, there is self-censorship."
And through the commissioning of those cartoons,
I wanted to put focus on this issue.
Is self-censorship taking place or is it not?
How do illustrators and cartoonists in Denmark
face this issue?
And I received 12 cartoons that were published
September 30, 2005 and I wrote a short text laying out
the rationale behind this journalistic project.
I don't think that it in any way transgressed what
we usually do.
As an editor and journalist, if you hear about a problem,
you want to find out if it's true or not.
And in this case, we asked people not to talk,
but to show.
Not to tell, but to show how they look at this issue
of self-censorship.
And I think only 3 out of 12 cartoons depicted
the Prophet Muhammad.