Paper Fires Caricaturists; ‘Muslims Doing It Fine By Themselves’

Given the cartoonish behavior of so many Muslims, there appears to be no function left for a caricaturist to serve.

Copenhagen, October 12 – A Scandinavian publication known for its irreverent depictions of the prophet Muhammad dismissed its staff of cartoonists today, noting that the behavior of Muslims, especially in the Middle East, provided enough caricature to make their work irrelevant.

The Copenhagen-based Tajkinder Pissposten trafficked in images many Muslims found offensive, both because depictions of the prophet are taboo in Islam and because the images often mocked and stereotyped adherents of Islam. However, publisher Lars Leeder told reporters this afternoon that over the last year and a half, there has been nothing to add to the news, and he has been forced to lay off three of the publication’s caricaturists.

“I regret having to make this move, but given the cartoonish behavior of so many Muslims, there appears to be no function left for a caricaturist to serve, and, with a heavy heart, we are forced to terminate the contracts of three otherwise outstanding artists,” he said.

Peer Ovbals, Sofa Kitall, and Leif Sabicz’s work had graced page two of Tajkinder Pissposten’s Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday editions for nearly ten years, each one devoted to lampooning a different aspect of political Islam and its adherents. The local nature of the paper kept the cartoons mostly under the radar, and none of the three were among those whose work sparked riots and violence in the Muslim world when various cartoon images of Muhammad were published by European papers in 2007. But the increasingly absurd pronouncements and actions of, for example, Palestinians, drove home to Leeder the redundancy of keeping people on staff who would simply have to reproduce some of the day’s straight news to get the same effect.

According to Leeder, the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas telling the United Nations General Assembly that his people’s culture was a culture of peace. “I had to make sure I wasn’t watching some comedy channel,” he confessed. “Then last week the guy goes and praises murders and would-be murderers, calls every drop of blood spilled ‘sacred,’ and urges everyone to take up knives and stones, while his official media blames Israel for the violence or denies culpability of the perpetrators despite ample video evidence. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.”

On a broader scale, Leeder pointed to Muslim behavior in Iraq, Syria, and even Europe, where unabashed promotion of intolerance, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, and outright entitlement could have come directly from the second page of his paper. “You’d think that European governments tolerating violence against women and children, in the name of multiculturalism, would be too absurd to exist in real life,” he explained. “Or sections of Stockholm and Malmö where the police won’t set foot. People attacked in British cities – not Riyadh or Tehran, remember – for not dressing according to Islamic norms. Our society has become a mockery of itself, and sadly, three fine contributors will have to find other work.”