Note: this article was originally posted at The Last Ditch in March 2006. At that time, a Danish magazine's publication of unflattering depictions of Mohammed had touched off riots across much of the Muslim world, resulting in mass destruction and several mob-instigated murders. The article is reposted here and now in 2015, as the points it makes are tragically once again quite relevant in light of last Tuesday's Charlie Hebdo massacre carried out by radical Islamists in Paris.
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| "He's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth and partly fiction." |
by Andy Nowicki
The now-notorious Mohammed cartoons published in Denmark last year have in fact a historical, as well as geographical, precedent. In 1845, a satirical Danish journal named Corsair ran a series of cartoons mocking the appearance of Copenhagen author and personality — and later renowned philosopher and Christian polemicist — Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). The cartoons highlighted the writer's baggy, ill-fitting clothes, particularly focusing attention upon his chronically uneven pant legs.
