Lars Vilks Muhammad drawings controversy
The controversy gained international attention after the Örebro-based regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published one of the drawings on 18 August as part of an editorial on self-censorship and freedom of religion.
[9] According to Vilks, the art and culture communities in Sweden repeatedly criticize the United States and Israel, whereas Muslim values are rarely even questioned.
Märta Wennerström, the exhibition's organizer, said that at first she "didn't realize the gravity of the situation" and that she made the decision to remove the drawings after consulting Swedish government agencies and private persons.
[4] On the same day, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), an inter-governmental organization which represents 57 Muslim countries, issued a statement where it strongly condemned the publishing of blasphemous caricatures of Muhammad by Swedish artist Lars Vilks in the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper.
The secretary-general of OIC, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, further called on the Swedish government to take "immediate punitive actions against the artist and the publishers of the cartoon and asked for their unqualified apology".
[5] On 3 September, the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments condemned the publication, saying that "such an irresponsible act is not conducive to friendly ties between the Islamic world and the west".
"[19] The same day, around 300 demonstrators – led by the Islamic Cultural Centre in Örebro – assembled outside the offices of Nerikes Allehanda to protest against the newspaper's publication.
[24] Following the publication in Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish police raised the security level around the newspaper's headquarters and some of its employees have been forced to use bodyguards after receiving death threats.
[25] One Muslim woman in western Sweden has been arrested on charges of issuing a death threat (Swedish: olaga hot) against Vilks in an e-mail.
[27] On 15 September, it was reported that the group Islamic State of Iraq had placed a bounty of at least $100,000 on the head of Lars Vilks and $50,000 on Ulf Johansson, editor-in-chief of Nerikes Allehanda.
The statement was found in an audio file on an Islamist website and was read by a person who identified himself as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of the Islamic State of Iraq.
[28][2][29] The United States-based SITE Institute has reported that websites run by militant Islamists have listed the names of over 100 Swedish companies with addresses, maps and logos.
[10] The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) and the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) both condemned the death threats against Vilks and Johansson.
[35] The same day, Colleen R. LaRose from the Philadelphia, US, suburbs, had her federal indictment unsealed charging her with trying to recruit Islamic terrorists to murder Vilks.
[43][non-primary source needed] In 2013, cartoonist Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier was added to Al-Qaeda's most wanted list, along with Lars Vilks and three Jyllands-Posten staff members: Kurt Westergaard, Carsten Juste, and Flemming Rose.
[47] The attacker fled after a brief gunfight with police and was later shot dead the next day after committing another shooting at a Jewish synagogue, killing one person and injuring two policemen.
