Saturday, October 07, 2006

Danish TV shows competition mocking Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish state TV on Friday aired amateur video footage showing young members of the anti-immigrant Danish Peoples' party engaged in a competition to draw humiliating cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

The video images have surfaced a little more than year after a Danish paper published cartoons of the Prophet that sparked violent protests worldwide.

The images, filmed by artist Martin Rosengaard Knudsen who posed as a member of the party for several months to document attitudes among young members, show a number of young people drinking, singing and drawing cartoons ridiculing the Prophet.

The faces of the young people were blurred in most of the footage. One cartoon, said to depict The Prophet as a camel, urinating and drinking beer, was also blurred. The competition took place in early August, according to Danish media.

Young members of other parties, including the ruling Liberal party criticised the DPP on Friday and Kenneth Kristensen, a senior member of the DPP's youth movement also criticised the events, but stopped short of apologising.

"It's not my kind of humour and it would not have happened if I had been there. It must not be repeated," he told Danish state TV.

The Danish Peoples' Party rose to prominence in an election of 2001 on a platform that combines demand for increased spending on schools and care for the elderly with a strong anti-immigrant stance.

It has been criticised for racism, but has been political ally of the centre-right coalition led by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen since 2001 and gained more than 13 percent of the vote in an election last year.

In September last year Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons, including one showing Mohammad (PBUH) with a bomb in his turban. They were later reprinted elsewhere. Muslim clerics denounced them as blasphemous, sparking protests in which more than 50 people died in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Most Muslims regard any depiction of the Prophet as offensive.

Courtesy of: Reuters

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