Danish media reported that the malicious Danish painter, Kurt Westergaard, known for drawing an insulting caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, died on Sunday at the age of 86.
His family told the newspaper “Berlingsky” that Westergaard died in his sleep after a long struggle with illness.
It is noteworthy that the painter was behind 12 cartoons published by the conservative daily “Jyllands-Posten” in 2005 under the title “Mohammad’s Face”, one of which sparked a private outcry.
After publishing the offensive cartoons, the painter received many threats, which led him to spend years in hiding, and then moved to live in a heavily guarded house in the Danish city of Aarhus.
Speaking to Reuters in 2008, Westergaard said he had no regrets about his satirical drawings. He added, “The cartoons sparked an important debate about the place of Islam in Western countries with secular values.”
In 2005, cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as “a man with a bomb on his turban” angered many of the world’s Muslims, which led to global protests and violent demonstrations.
At first, the cartoons went unnoticed, but after 15 days a demonstration was organized in Copenhagen, then the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark protested against them.
Anger escalated after that, with violence against Denmark in the Islamic world in February 2006, which was considered in Denmark the most serious foreign policy crisis since World War II.
The caricature-related violence culminated in the 2015 attack that killed 12 terrorist artists in the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which republished the cartoons in 2012.
