‘The reporter’s original concept was to investigate to what extent self-censorship exists in Denmark. Starting out with Kaare Bluitgen’s children’s book about Mohammed, to which apparently no illustrator dared openly contribute. There were other, similar, examples. That was how we started out. The idea was to write to 40 illustrators and ask if they would draw Mohammed for publication in Jyllands-Posten.

‘That’s why I can categorically reject any suggestion that the point was to provoke Muslims. If we want to talk about provocation - which in any circumstances I don’t feel it was - then we were provoking the illustrators who didn’t dare use their freedom of expression, out of fear of reprisals from extremist Muslims.

‘That was the goal: to find out whether self-censorship exists in Denmark to a greater degree than generally acknowledged. Which in my opinion is a perfectly legitimate journalistic project. We wanted to find out whether or not Danish newspaper illustrators dared to draw Mohammed.’

Yes, I know, we’ve been here before, but I just think this is something that needs to be stressed. From Politiken today, excerpts from an interview with Carsten Juste, Editor-in-Chief of J-P:
I simply do not know of any ads in Arab papers….