Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me the pleasure of bringing to you the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, cartoons which the ***** at Yale University Press were too cowardly to bring you. Enjoy! – ©Mark
TIMES ONLINE: Yale University Press was accused of cowardice and censorship yesterday after deciding not to reproduce cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in an academic book for fear of violent reprisals.
This year Yale will publish a scholarly work about reactions to the cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper in 2005, which sparked protests around the world.
But readers will not see the 12 cartoons that are the subject of the book, including one showing Muhammad with a turban like a bomb. In fact, they will not get to see any images of the prophet at all, not even a 19th-century sketch by Gustave Doré.
Yale has decided to publish The Cartoons that Shook the World, by Jytte Klausen, without any likenesses of the Prophet but the howls of protest are all the louder for the fact that there have not been any threats of violence related to the book.
"‘We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands’. That is effectively the new policy position at Yale University Press,” Cary Nelson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in an open letter.
Yale took its decision to self-censor after consulting two dozen experts, including counter-terrorism specialists and the highest-ranking Muslim official at the UN.
Yale says that the experts concluded that the book should omit the 12 Danish cartoons but also all illustrations of the Prophet. [sic] including an Ottoman print, a children’s book illustration and the Dore sketch, which portrays Muhammad being tormented in hell in a scene from Dante’s Inferno that has also inspired Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dali. >>> James Bone in New York | Tuesday, August 18, 2009
