Denmark's national TV2 channel broadcast on Friday excerpts from a video made by members of an extreme-right party showing the Prophet Mohammed as a beer-drinking camel and a drunken terrorist attacking Copenhagen.
COPENHAGEN: Denmark's national TV2 channel broadcast on Friday excerpts from a video made by members of an extreme-right party showing the Prophet Mohammed as a beer-drinking camel and a drunken terrorist attacking Copenhagen.
Filmed in August, the video shows young adherents of the Danish People's Party mocking the Islamic prophet during a summer party, with some portraying Mohammed dressed in a turban and wearing a belt with explosives as others look on in laughter.
The images were shown on TV2 only fleetingly, with a youth playing the part of Mohammed visible only from the back, as well as a drawing.
The editor-in-chief of the television station, Lars Bennike, emphasized that the purpose of "showing the short video sequence was not at all to show the drawings or the antics of the youths" in the DPP.
"Our decision to broadcast this sequence was only due to the fact that the president of the youth branch of the party has distanced himself from this gathering," he said.
"We thought it was interesting politically and that this justified showing the video," he added.
The participants in the August gathering were holding an informal competition to see who could draw the Prophet in the most humiliating and laughable manner.
A song playing in the background contains the lyrics, "The camel Mohammed has four beers..."
The video was filmed by a member of the party's youth wing, Martin Rosengaard Knudsen, also a member of the artists' group called "Defending Denmark."
The president of the DPP Youth, Kenneth Kristensen, who did not participate in the party, criticized their behavior as "inconvenient".
"It is not my kind of humor, and things would not have happened like that had I been present," he told the Nyhedsavisen newspaper, a daily free sheet.
"This kind of gathering should not occur again," he added.
The publication in September last year of 12 caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, followed by the reprinting of the cartoons in dozens of other mostly European newspapers, sparked outrage and weeks of violent protests throughout the Muslim world, leading to several deaths.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}