FIRE's Exclusive Interview with Flemming Rose, Editor Behind Censored Mohammed Cartoons

by Adam Kissel and Flemming Rose
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
September 30, 2009

https://www.legal-project.org/478/fires-exclusive-interview-with-flemming-rose

Excerpt:

[Adam Kissel, FIRE] Yale University Press, apparently under pressure from Yale University officials, banned both historical and recent images of Mohammed from a scholarly book about the worldwide controversy involving cartoons of Mohammed first published by your newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in 2005. Do Yale's actions do any damage to freedom of expression or academic freedom?

[Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten] Yes, Yale's censorship is of course very damaging. Not only to academic freedom and freedom of expression but also to those Muslims around the world who want to enjoy the same kind of liberties that we do. Why is this? Well, by legitimizing censorship in the U.S., Yale sends a strong signal to those forces in the Muslim world who use censorship to silence criticism of the powers that be. They also tell Muslim majorities that they can play the offense card to attack religious, ethnic or sexual minorities. I think censoring the cartoons is very discriminating against Muslims because Yale in fact is saying, "OK, we understand that you are so wild and uncivilized that we apply a different standard to you than we do to everybody else." If I were a Muslim I'd be very offended by this.

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