That self-censored Yale book about the Danish cartoons

The Globe and Mail was kind enough to ask me to review Jytte Klausen's book, "The Cartoons that Shook the World". It was an informative book, but laced with the author's own dhimmitude. The fact that Klausen's publisher, Yale University Press, pre-emptively decided not to reprint the cartoons in a book about the cartoons, shows that her submissiveness is becoming the norm in Western liberal academia, not the exception.

You can read my review here. Here is an excerpt:

[Former Danish Prime Minister] Fogh Rasmussen is the villain of Klausen's book, because he didn't submit sufficiently to the Muslim diplomats. He “showed little interest in maintaining Denmark's international reputation as both a liberal-minded member of international organizations and a fair and reliable business partner.” Got it? To Klausen, “liberal” no longer means standing up for Danish civil rights such as freedom of speech and secular pluralism; it means submitting to foreign bullies and domestic provocateurs. And blaming Fogh Rasmussen – not the Muslim boycott of Danish exports – for business disruptions is awfully creative.

And then there is pure fiction. “The Rushdie Affair is widely regretted among Muslim leaders in Europe and in the Islamic nations,” she writes. Really? That “affair” began with Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa , which continues to this day – as does Rushdie's need for security. Has Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renounced that death sentence?

Or these: “No widely influential religious authority issued edicts … calling for punishment of the editors and the cartoonists”; “Islamic clerical authorities … sometimes used language they later regretted, but they, too, wanted peaceful protests”; and “Muslim diplomats and governments sought to contain the anti-Western clerics and parties.”

Each of these assertions is actually disproved elsewhere in Klausen's book: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, ordered Muslims to “rage, and show our rage to the world”; al-Qaeda bombed the Danish embassy in Pakistan; Muslim governments from Syria to Iran organized street riots. Klausen projects her own politically correct narrative onto Islamic fascists who were quite clear about their real motivations.

Notwithstanding all this, The Cartoons That Shook the World is an informative read. But you won't find the actual cartoons in it. There's a cartoon mocking George W. Bush; there's a death threat against the cartoonists. But Yale University Press refused to publish Klausen's book as she submitted it – with the 12 Danish cartoons. Yale ordered her to remove the cartoons, citing unnamed “experts” who claimed the book “ran a serious risk of instigating violence.” Several American newspapers, like The Philadelphia Inquirer, published the cartoons without incident. Yale has had no actual threats, but it pre-emptively surrendered. If Klausen wanted to live up to Yale's motto – “light and truth” – she would have done what the entire editorial staff of the New York Press did in 2006 when their publisher vetoed their reprinting of the cartoons: They resigned en masse.

Given Klausen's burning derision for Fogh Rasmussen's decision to stand for freedom, it's no surprise she collapsed immediately herself, academic integrity be damned. Her surrender – and Yale's – is not a detail but a central part of the story, for it is exactly the outcome desired by the Danish imams, the Saudi diplomats and their chorus of rioters.