Kurt Westergor died, drawing cartoons with Mohammed – In memory

Kurt Westergor, the author of the cartoons with the Prophet Muhammad that sparked a wave of protests in the Islamic world in 2005, has died at the age of 86. The news was announced by the publication Berlinskge, referring to the relatives of the Dane, according to whom he had been ill for a long time.

In the conservative newspaper Jyllands-Postenwhere he had worked since the mid-1980s, Westergor painted Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban. The cartoon was one of 12 with which the publication wanted to emphasize how self-censorship on the topic of radical, conservative and political Islam is increasingly being imposed in Western Europe.

For many Muslims, this proved to be a deadly insult, ambassadors of Muslim countries formally protested in front of Denmark, attacks on Danish embassies and a boycott of Danish goods began in early 2006, but Copenhagen refused to apologize because it was a matter of freedom of speech. . Dozens died in these protests.

The story did not end there, because the cartoonist and his colleagues were threatened with death. He was provided with 24-hour security and Westergor was forced to hide where he lived, but then decided not to hide and announced that he lived in Aarhus. In 2008, three Tunisians were arrested on suspicion of plotting to assassinate him. In 2010, a 28-year-old Somali man broke into his home with a knife and was sentenced in 2011 to 9 years in prison for attempted murder and terrorism. Three years later, a 29-year-old psychiatrist was arrested for threatening to plant a bomb in his home. Westergor then moved back in, accompanied by a bodyguard, and hid his address.

In 2015, terrorists attacked the editorial office of the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, which published the cartoons, and killed 12 people.

Born in a Danish village, the cartoonist is a teacher by education, taught children in German and worked with children with disabilities.

In an interview with Reuters in 2008, he said he did not regret drawing the cartoons. According to him, they have provoked an “important serious discussion” about the place of Islam in Western societies, where secular values ​​dominate. Westergor also believed that the international scandal had led to some change in Islam.

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