The auction of an original edition of the most famous Danish caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, which provoked violent riots in certain Muslim countries and is still debated, is due to end on Friday March 1.
The auctions, open online on the kwicons.com site since February 25, were due to end at 4 p.m. (3 p.m. in Paris), the auction house warned on the Internet.
Published with eleven other drawings on September 30, 2005, by the conservative Danish daily Jyllands-Posten under the title “The Face of Mohammed”, the caricature, signed Kurt Westergaard, shows the prophet with a bomb-shaped turban. “This original and iconic drawing, which Mr. Westergaard chose to keep in his private collection in 2005, is now being brought to market for the first time,” said auction house kwicons, whose name means “Kurt Westergaard Icons”. The illustrator, who died in 2021 at the age of 86, lived for more than fifteen years under police protection at an address kept secret.
Anti-Danish violence in the Muslim world
In 2005, the caricatures initially went unnoticed, but after two weeks a demonstration took place in Copenhagen, and then the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark protested. Anger escalated with anti-Danish violence in the Muslim world in February 2006, seen in Denmark as the most serious diplomatic crisis for the country since the Second World War.
The violence linked to the caricatures culminated in 2015 with the attack which left twelve dead at the French satirical weekly “Charlie Hebdo” in Paris, which had reprinted the caricatures in 2012.
Mr Westergaard had worked at Jyllands-Posten since the mid-1980s as an illustrator and, according to the Danish daily Berlingske, the design had been printed once before, without causing controversy.
In France, a history and geography teacher, Samuel Paty, was stabbed then beheaded in 2020 near his college, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in Yvelines, after showing his students caricatures of Mohammed during a course on freedom of expression.
