Flemming Rose

He noted that Kurt Westergaard had previously drawn outrageous cartoons of Jesus and the Star of David, neither of which had led to "embassy burnings or death threats".

Rose asked: "Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam?...When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes.

But that does not mean that I would refrain from printing them as long as they fell within the limits of the law and of the newspaper's ethical code….As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult.

"[4] After the cartoon crisis, Rose traveled around the U.S. and interviewed such figures as Francis Fukuyama, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, and Bernard Lewis for the New York Times and Jyllands-Posten.

Prior to the publishing of the cartoons, he noted, the Tate gallery in London had removed a torn-up copy of the Koran from an exhibition in order to avoid offending Muslims.

After the cartoon case, by contrast, the proposed cancellation for similar reasons of a Berlin production of Idomeneo caused "a tremendous public outcry and outrage.

"[5] Europeans, Rose suggested in the interview, do not know how to deal with Islam because of its "strangeness" to them and because of their own "self-hatred stemming from our colonial past and things like that."

"[5] In an October 2007 interview with the American libertarian magazine Reason, Rose stated that "the left is in a deep crisis in Europe because of their lack of willingness to confront the racist ideology of Islamism.

"[7] In February 2008, in response to a plot to kill Kurt Westergaard, 17 Danish newspapers reprinted his cartoon of Muhammed with the bomb in his turban.

Rose rejected this special treatment, noting that during the Cold War "people like Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Andrei Sakharov" had insisted that "It is not cultures, religions or political systems that enjoy rights.

Rose also rejected the "misplaced sensitivity" that "is being used by tyrants and fanatics to justify murder and silence criticism," and deplored the West's "lack of clarity on these issues," which led some people to argue "that Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Taslima Nasreen and Kurt Westergaard bear a certain amount of responsibility for their fate.

"[8] In March 2009, Rose spoke in Oslo, and described the Norwegian debate on free speech as "politically correct," less "open, direct, and coarse" than in Denmark.

His main point, wrote the reviewer, is that "in a liberal democracy no individual or group can demand special treatment in the free exchange of words."

"[12] When Rose's book was about to come out, Danish Foreign Minister Lene Espersen met with 17 ambassadors from Muslim countries in an effort to prevent a new cartoon crisis.

Later that day the paper's editor-in-chief said that Jyllands-Posten under no circumstances would publish the Holocaust cartoons [1] and Flemming Rose later said that "he had made a mistake".

[2] [3][permanent dead link‍] The next day Carsten Juste, the editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten, stated that Flemming Rose was on indefinite leave because he needed time off.

In 2013, Flemming Rose was added to a hit list in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine, along with cartoonist Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier, Lars Vilks and three Jyllands-Posten staff members: Kurt Westergaard, Carsten Juste.

This invitation was withdrawn by the Vice Chancellor, Max Price, during July 2016 over fears that the lecture may "spark conflict on campus, create security risks and retard rather than advance academic freedom at the university.

"[18] Rose has translated several books from Russian into Danish, including Den sørgmodige detektiv (Viktor Astafyev, 1987); Børn af Arbat (Anatoly Rybakov, 1987); parts of Perestrojka, nytænkning i russisk politik (Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987); 3 x tak til kammerat Stalin: min barndom og ungdom i Rusland 1936–54 (Anmartin Broide, 1988); and Mod strømmen (Boris Yeltsin, 1990).