On this day in ...... 2006 (5 years ago today), asserting the freedom of the press was at stake, 6 newspapers in 4 European countries "reprinted controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad which have provoked outrage, trade boycotts and threats of violence towards Danes." The 12 cartoons had been published in several months earlier in "a right-of-centre Danish broadsheet." The controversy has resurfaced at times since; for example, in 2009, when Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was selected as NATO Secretary-General, and just last month, when trial began involving an alleged plot to attack the cartoonist.
(Prior February 1 posts are here, here, and here.)
