Award, in Potsdam, 2010
The New York Times reports controversial Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has died at the age of 86. Westergaard created the infamous 2005 Jyllands-Posten cartoon that was widely interpreted as an image of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, which was submitted to the newspaper as part of a project exploring self-censorship towards fear of Islamist reprisal. The cartoon helped ignite an international firestorm, leading to deadly protests, terror plots, assassination attempts, and Westergaard living under constant police protection.
Westergaard was born Kurt Vestergaard on July 13, 1935, in a village in southern Jutland (the main Danish peninsula). He had a conservative Christian upbringing, but considered himself an atheist in later life. He was initially a teacher before training in psychology, and subsequently worked as a teacher with handicapped children, eventually becoming the principal of a special needs school in Djursland. Drawing was always one of his hobbies, and he began cartooning for Jyllands-Posten in the early 1980s.
After the publication of the 12 Muhammad cartoons, Westergaard was added to Al-Qaeda’s main hit list, along with the paper’s editor-in-chief Carsten Juste, and editor Flemming Rose. In 2008, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service arrested and charged three men with plotting to murder Westergaard, after which they placed him under protective surveillance, and moved him from home to home. In 2010, Westergaard had to take refuge in a panic room, after an armed Somali man broke into his home in Aarhus: the intruder was shot by police, and subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison, as well as permanent deportation from Denmark. Westergaard, then 75, retired shortly after the attack.
In a 2008 interview with Reuters, Westergaard said he had no regrets about the Muhammad cartoon, saying “I have no problems with Muslims. I made a cartoon which was aimed at the terrorists who use an interpretation of Islam as their spiritual dynamite,” and that “I would do it the same way (again) because I think that this cartoon crisis in a way [had been] a catalyst which is intensifying the adaptation of Islam. Without a cartoon that provoked the Muslims, it would have been something else; a novel, a play, a movie, this situation would have occurred sooner or later anyway.” He said living under surveillance was “a special way of living, but you can still have your every day life anyway and you can do what you usually do. It is not so bad.”
He did have a more right-wing response to criticism from the Danish Muslim community though, complaining, “Many of the immigrants who came to Denmark, they had nothing. We gave them everything — money, apartments, their own schools, free university, health care. In return, we asked one thing — respect for democratic values, including free speech. Do they agree? This is my simple test.” He had a complex relationship with far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, expressing support for the screening of his anti-Islam film Fitna, but also taking legal action against him for taking his Muhammad cartoon “out of its original context,” and describing him as having “a overly generalized perception of Muslims as potential terrorists.”
During his lifetime, Westergaard was recognized with the Sappho Award by the Danish Free Press Society for “his work with courage and a refusal to compromise,” and with the M100 Media Award (M100-Medienpreis) by German Chancellor Angela Merkel for “strengthening democracy, freedom of opinion and of the press, and European understanding.” He reportedly passed away in Copenhagen after a long illness, and is survived by his wife Gitte, their five children, ten grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
