Danish publisher explains why he published the Mohammed cartoons

The WaPo published his editorial on Sunday, but I'm in "catch-up" mode after a relaxing weekend, so here it is... I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. [...] At the end of September, a Danish standup comedian said in an interview with Jyllands-Posten that he had no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran. This was the culmination of a series of disturbing instances of self-censorship. Last September, a Danish children's writer had trouble finding an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Three people turned down the job for fear of consequences. The person who finally accepted insisted on anonymity, which in my book is a form of self-censorship. European translators of a critical book about Islam also did not want their names to appear on the book cover beside the name of the author, a Somalia-born Dutch politician who has herself been in hiding. Around the same time, the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.) Finally, at the end of September, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with a group of imams, one of whom called on the prime minister to interfere with the press in order to get more positive coverage of Islam. It seems to me that Europe has been strong-armed by extremist Muslims. That people in a free society fear Islamic reaction above all things does not bode well for the society or for an Islam where the moderate Muslims remain silent in condemning death threats against artists and writers who depict Islam in a light that the extremists don't approve of. They don't have to approve of what the artist created, or the writer wrote, or the cartoonist drew. They do need to come to terms with people having the freedom to express their ideas. There are many peaceful ways Muslims can voice their displeasure with an artist, a gallery, a newspaper, or a television station. Death threats and rioting certainly don't fall into that category. Flemming Rose wrote a fabulous piece. Read the whole thing. UPDATE: Sorry. Forgot to put in my links.