Death threats

At first, though, the outrage was local. Several thousand Danish Muslims protested. Three of the cartoonists received death threats; security guards were posted outside the newspaper's offices in Copenhagen and Arhus.

What should have remained a parochial row was to blow up into an international incident, largely because of the perceived obdurate response of Denmark's centre-right prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. On October 19 ambassadors from Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, demanded a meeting. They wanted the paper prosecuted. The PM gave them the brush-off, arguing that his government could not interfere with the right to free speech.