My position on Islam is not exactly the same as the one of Mr. Lars Hedegaard, who was formerly a leftist. However, I totally agree with him and his activities to defend freedom of speech including the Islamic issues in the West. In any civilized societies today, such an incident upon him must not be permitted in any way. As for more detailed episode of mine related to this issue, please refer to my Japanese blog dated 7 February 2013（http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily/20130207）. (Lily)
1. Copenhagen post（http://cphpost.dk）
Islam critic survives assassination attempt, 5 February 2013
Assailant’s gun jammed after firing first shot - police now searching for two men wearing ski masks seen climbing into Copenhagen Zoo
Hedegaard was cleared on racism charges in 2011 brought about for comments made about Islam and Muslims
The renowned anti-Islam journalist and scholar Lars Hedegaard reportedly survived an assassination attempt outside his home on Pelargonieviej in Frederiksberg this morning.
According to Ritzau, the assailant fled when his gun jammed after firing the first shot at around 11:20.
“A man shot at the victim but he missed and the bullet went over his head,” police commissioner Lars-Christian Borg told Ritzau. “When he tried to fire again, the pistol clicked and the assailant ran away.”
While Borg would not confirm the identity of the assassin’s target, a neighbour of Hedegaard’s told Politiken newspaper that he was the target.
“He told me that a man had approached him with a package and when he went to take it the man fired at him,” the neighbour told Politiken.
After first sealing off Hedegaard’s street, police have now also cordoned off Copenhagen Zoo after two men wearing ski masks were seen jumping over the wall to the zoo into the hippopotamus enclosure.
Berlingske newspaper reports that witnesses reported hearing what sounded like a gunshot at around 13:50.
Police say the man that fired the shot was wearing a red coat, is around 30 years of age and has dark skin and thick, dark hair.
Hedegaard was charged with racism after he made a series of critical statements about Islam and Muslims that included comparing Islam to Nazism and the claim that Muslims rape their own children. He was eventually cleared by the High Court in 2011.
Witnesses to the shooting incident are asked to call 114.
(cf.) Uproar in Free Press Society, 23 December 2009
Free Press Society president Lars Hedegaard describes Muslims as morally depraved and rapists
Three members of the Free Press Society’s advisory committee have resigned in the wake of comments made by the society’s president.
Lars Hedegaard has gone on a veritable tirade against Muslims in an interview with website Snaphanen, accusing them of raping their own children, lying without conscience and basically having no morals whatsoever.
‘When a Muslim man rapes a woman, it is his right to do it,’ he said in the interview, referring to his interpretation of the tenets of Islam.
‘Whenever it is prudent for a Muslim to hide his true intentions by lying or making a false oath in his own or in Islam’s service, then it is ok to do it,’ Hedegaard said.
Kathrine Lilleør, a Christian minister, author and member of the society’s advisory committee, said she would quit the committee if Hedegaard was not dismissed from his post.
The committee instead kicked Lilleør out. Subsequent to that action, MPs Søren Pind of the Liberal party and Naser Khader of the Conservatives both handed in their resignations from the advisory committee.
The Free Press Society’s board supports Hedegaard’s comments, although not necessarily agreeing with them 100 percent.
Board member Jette Plesner Dali said Hedegaard’s comments were valuable in that they broke the taboo of not criticising problems with Islam.
‘It’s a very off-limits and delicate issue that one has to address with a certain sensitivity – something that isn’t especially characteristic of Lars,’ she told Politiken newspaper. ‘It’s my feeling that an organisation such as the Free Press Society actually needs a president who can bulldoze his way through things a bit.’
Several leading media personalities are now challenging the society’s leadership and other members to take a stand on the issue, saying either they should come out in support of Hedegaard’s statements or quit the organisation.
Hedegaard sent out a press release yesterday as a follow-up to his interview. In it, he stood by his comments, although he attempted to soften the bluntness somewhat by saying he was referring more to the tenets of Islam than to individual Muslims.
‘I’ve always said that I’m not talking about all Muslims but about Islam and its fundamental view on women,’ the statement said. ‘It can be read in the holy scriptures about the Prophet’s actions and teachings.’
‘I don’t think all Muslims are aggressive, just that the ideology behind Islam is.’
Hedegaard has been reported to the police for racism over his comments by Yilmaz Evcil of the City of Århus’ integration council.
2. Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk)
Danish critic of Islam attacked by gunman, 5 February 2013
Man shoots at writer Lars Hedegaard outside his home in Copenhagen but misses and flees after scuffle
• Lars Hedegaard, who heads two groups that claim press freedom is under threat from Islam.
• A gunman has tried to shoot a Danish writer and prominent critic of Islam, but the writer managed to fend off his assailant and was not injured in the attack.
• Police said Lars Hedegaard, who heads two groups that claim press freedom is under threat from Islam, was the target of the shooting. In a brief statement, they said a roughly 25-year-old gunman rang the doorbell at the writer's Copenhagen home and when he opened the door, the gunman fired a shot aimed at his head, but missed.
• "After a scuffle the attacker fled. We do not know whether the police have apprehended him," the Danish Free Press Society said.
• Hedegaard, 70, heads both the Free Press Society and the International Free Press Society. He was fined 5,000 kroner (£570) in 2011 for making a series of insulting and degrading statements about Muslims, but appealed against the conviction and was acquitted by the Danish supreme court in April 2012.
• Denmark's prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, condemned the attack. "It is even worse if the attack is rooted in an attempt to prevent Lars Hedegaard using his freedom of expression," she told the Danish news agency Ritzau.
• Hedegaard has expressed support for a range of outspoken critics of Islam in Europe, including the Swedish artist Lars Vilks and Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.
• "Failed attack on my friend and Islam critic Lars Hedegaard in Denmark this morning. My thoughts are with him. Terrible," Wilders tweeted.
• The Free Press Society said it was "shaken and angry" over the attack, but "relieved that the perpetrator did not succeed".
・This article was amended on 7 February 2013, because it said that Lars Hedegaard was fined but did not point out that his conviction was later quashed by a higher court.
3．Daily Mail（http://www.dailymail.co.uk）
'The bullet flew past my ear': Danish anti-Islam writer, 70, narrowly survives doorstep assassination attempt, 5 February 2013
• Gunman rang doorbell of Lars Hedegaard's apartment in Copenhagen
• Fired a bullet that narrowly missed the 70-year-old's head
• Would-be assassin fled after Mr Hedegaard punched him in the face
• Police searching for 'foreign' man aged between 20 and 25
by Kerry Mcdermott
A writer and outspoken critic of Islam narrowly escaped being shot dead after he opened his door to a would-be assassin posing as a delivery man at his home in Denmark.
The gunman rang the doorbell of 70-year-old Lars Hedegaard's apartment in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen, under the pretext of delivering a parcel, but when the writer opened his front door the hitman pulled out a weapon and fired a shot that just missed Mr Hedegaard's head.
According to Mr Hedegaard, who described how the bullet 'flew past' his right ear, said the sniper fled after the writer punched him in the face causing him to drop his gun.
Investigation: Danish police outside Mr Hedegaard's apartment in Frederiksberg, where a gunman fired a shot that narrowly missed the writer's head
Assassination attempt: Danish Lars Hedegaard, a writer and outspoken critic of Islam, opened his front door to a gunman posing as a delivery man
Mr Hedegaard, who heads up a group that claims press freedom is under threat from Islam, said the attack had left him shaken but not injured.
Police in Copenhagen confirmed they were searching for the suspect, described as a 'foreign' man aged between 20 and 25.
Mr Hedegaard said of the shock attack: 'The bullet flew past my right ear, after which I attacked him and punched him in the face, which made him lose the gun.'
The gunman then fled the scene, he said.
Hedegaard heads the Free Press Society in Denmark and its international offshoot, the International Free Press Society. He is also among the publishers of a weekly anti-Islam newsletter.
In April 2012 he was acquitted of hate speech over a series of statements about Muslims.
Hunt: Police in Denmark are searching for the suspect, described as a 'foreign' man aged between 20 and 25
Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt condemned what she called a 'despicable' act.
'It is even worse if the attack is rooted in an attempt to prevent Lars Hedegaard to use his freedom of expression,' she said.
Mr Hedegaard has expressed support for a range of outspoken critics of Islam in Europe, including Swedish artist Lars Vilks and Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.
'Failed attack on my friend and Islam critic Lars Hedegaard in Denmark this morning. My thoughts are with him. Terrible,' Wilders posted on Twitter.
The Free Press Society said it was 'shaken and angry', but 'relieved that the perpetrator did not succeed'.
Hitman: A police officer gathers evidence outside Mr Hedegaard's home today
Critic: Mr Hedegaard was acquitted of hate speech in 2012 after being accused of making insulting and degrading remarks about Muslims
Several Scandinavian writers, artists and journalists have been exposed to threats and violence from extremists since the 2005 publication of Danish newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad triggered an uproar in Muslim countries.
Many Muslims believe the prophet should not be depicted at all - even in a flattering way - because it might encourage idolatry
In 2010, a Somali man living in Denmark used an axe to break into the home of one of the cartoonists, who escaped unharmed by locking himself into a panic room.
Last year, four Swedish residents were convicted of terrorism in Denmark for plotting a shooting spree at the newspaper that first published the Muhammad caricatures.
In Sweden, Vilks has lived under police protection after a drawing he made depicting Muhammad as a dog led to death threats from militant Islamists.
4. Associated Press
‘The bullet flew past my right ear’: Danish Islam critic narrowly escapes assassination attempt, 6 February 2013
Lars Hedegaard, a prominent Danish Islam critic who heads controversial group Free Press Society that claims free speech is under threat from Islam. Hedegaard escaped an attempt on his life in Copenhagen on Tuesday.
A gunman who tried to shoot a Danish writer and prominent critic of Islam missed and fled after a scuffle with his intended victim.
Lars Hedegaard, who heads a group that claims press freedom is under threat from Islam, said he was shaken but not physically injured in the attack at his Copenhagen home.
Police said they were searching for the suspect, whom they described as a “foreign” man aged 20-25.
Mr. Hedegaard, 70, said the gunman rang the doorbell of his apartment building Tuesday on the pretext of delivering a package. When he opened the front door, the man pulled out a gun and fired a shot that narrowly missed him.
I attacked him and punched him in the face, which made him lose the gun
“The bullet flew past my right ear, after which I attacked him and punched him in the face, which made him lose the gun,” Mr. Hedegaard said.
The writer is head of the Free Press Society in Denmark and its international offshoot, the International Free Press Society.
He is also one of the publishers of a weekly anti-Islam newsletter.
In 2011, Mr. Hedegaard was convicted of hate speech and fined 5,000 kroner ($1,000) for making insulting and degrading statements about Muslims.
He appealed the ruling and was acquitted by Denmark’s Supreme Court in 2012.
CLAUS BECH/AFP/Getty ImagesPolicemen survey the area on Tuesday in Copenhagen where a man tried to shoot Lars Hedegaard, a prominent Danish Islam critic who heads controversial group Free Press Society that claims free speech is under threat from Islam.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s prime minister, condemned the “despicable” act.
“It is even worse if the attack is rooted in an attempt to prevent Lars Hedegaard to use his freedom of expression,” she said.
Mr. Hedegaard has expressed support for a range of outspoken Islam critics in Europe, including Swedish artist Lars Vilks and Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.
“Failed attack on my friend and Islam critic Lars Hedegaard in Denmark this morning. My thoughts are with him. Terrible,” Mr. Wilders tweeted.
Several Scandinavian writers, artists and journalists have been exposed to threats and violence from extremists since the 2005 publication of Danish newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad triggered an uproar in Muslim countries.
Many Muslims believe the prophet should not be depicted at all — even in a flattering way — because it might encourage idolatry.
In 2010, a Somali man living in Denmark used an axe to break into the home of one of the cartoonists.
Last year, four Swedish residents were convicted of terrorism in Denmark for plotting a shooting spree at the newspaper that first published the Muhammad caricatures.
In Sweden, Mr. Vilks has lived under police protection after a drawing he made depicting Muhammad as a dog led to death threats from hardline Islamists.
5. National Post（http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com）
George Jonas: Making excuses for an aggrieved gunman, 27 February 2013
by George Jonas
Following a failed assassination attempt against Lars Hedegaard, a Danish journalist, two points of view have emerged in what used to be called Christendom. They oppose one another diametrically. Before discussing either, let’s set the scene.
On Feb. 5, Hedegaard answers his apartment buzzer. The young man downstairs is about 25, and later was described as having the appearance of an “immigrant.” He speaks without an accent, is dressed as a mailman, and claims to have a parcel. As Hedegaard opens the door, the postie points a handgun at his head and pulls the trigger. He misses, but the Dane, a grizzled 70-year-old, considers his act unfriendly and knocks him silly. Hedegaard’s demeanor makes it clear that answering his door was the last act of accommodation he would offer, so the young man wearing the red jacket of the Danish Postal Service picks himself up along with the gun he dropped and departs without further ado — whether muttering indignantly or not, the record doesn’t say.
Motive? We don’t know. Maybe Hedegaard doesn’t like immigrants. Or maybe he has no tolerance for mailmen using him for target practice. It’s also possible that he quickly loses patience with poor shots … oh, you mean the young man’s motive for trying to shoot the writer?
We don’t know that either, but Hedegaard is president of his country’s chapter of the International Free Press Society, and the attempt on his life occurred after he had repeatedly criticized militant Islam.
The world press has approached the story at a snail’s pace. When they finally roused themselves, centre-right-to-right-wing commentators responded by saying that the episode’s roots lay in two larger factors:
First, cowardly law- and opinion-makers in the West have accommodated the politics of intimidation: Today an expression of doubt that Islam is a religion of peace may not only draw a violent response from militant Islamists but a warning letter from a Human Rights Commission. Second, spasms of violence produced by protected minorities — such as native occupation of public roads, or the killing of an abusive spouse in his sleep — have become seen as culturally acceptable alternatives to remedies of justice.
Given these larger trends, observers on the right will ask, is it any wonder that some thin-skinned or feebly-anchored individuals come to think that for them and their unjustly treated groups it’s justifiable to threaten, coerce and murder? (It’s a rhetorical question.)
Not so, say left-to-left-of-centre commentators. Human rights-type forums and remedies reduce societal frictions. Explosions occur when we fail to accommodate minorities. The last thing we want to do is blame the victim (after all, that very phrase is one of the left’s old and cherished clichés). According to this view, politicians and journalists who are attacked in the Lars Hedegaard manner are asking for it. Every one of these regrettable acts of violence was preceded by some act of provocation.
What did the bespectacled, white-bearded, 70-year-old Lars Hedegaard say and do to attract enemies?
According to Lawrence J. Haas, Al Gore’s former communication director in the Clinton-years, Hedegaard once said in a speech: “The leaders of the present day Islamic onslaught on Demark and the West make no bones about their intention to eventually impose [strict Islamic] Sharia law on the infidel population and, thus, reduce Denmark’s indigenous population to a state of Dhimmitude — that is, slaves in their own country.”
Haas doesn’t quote this because he thinks it justifies assassination; on the contrary. However, what it does is illustrate the lengths to which Islamists will go to prove Hedegaard right.
That’s why I quote it, even though I disagree with Hedegaard. Actually, I think Muslim radicals make a plethora of bones about their intentions. The leaders of the Islamist onslaught on Europe make enough bones to start a glue factory.
In Bertolt Brecht’s play Galileo, a character remarks that it’s an unhappy land that has no hero. Another character disagrees. He says that a land is unhappy if it needs a hero. Yes, but was there ever a land that didn’t?
In Galileo’s day, had the thought occurred to someone, looking at the skies over Italy, as it did to him, that the Earth moves around the sun, he would have been well advised to keep it to himself. Christendom was something of a theocracy back then, and having a different cosmology than the church could be seriously detrimental to a person’s health.
Galileo was no hero. He recanted, and was allowed to finish his life in the relative comfort of house arrest. Hedegaard claims to be no hero, either. He writes in The Wall Street Journal that he has gone into hiding, considering his age, probably for the rest of his days. Theocracy rules. Maybe the Earth doesn’t move, after all.
6. Spectator（http://www.spectator.co.uk）
Lars Hedegaard interview: ‘I may be killed if I write this’, 16 February 2013
Lars Hedegaard, founder of Denmark’s Free Press Society, speaks from a secret location after an attempt on his life
by Douglas Murray
The assassin came to his home dressed as a postman. When the historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard opened his front door, the man — whom Lars describes as ‘looking like a typical Muslim immigrant’ in his mid-twenties — fired straight at his head. Though Hedegaard was a yard away, the bullet narrowly missed. The mild-mannered scholar (70 years old) then punched his assailant in the head. The man dropped the gun, picked it up and fired again. The gun jammed and the man ran off. More than a week later, he has yet to be found.
Hedegaard has had to leave his home and is under police protection at an undisclosed location. A week after the attempt to murder him we manage to speak by phone.
‘We have had quite a few attempts to silence people here. [The Danish cartoonist] Kurt Westergaard was almost killed a couple of years ago by a man from Somalia who came to his house and broke into it with an axe and tried to kill him. We still have prominent politicians under police guard, the former leader of the Danish People’s Party Pia Kjærsgaard, and also the former Conservative politician Naser Khader, who is of Syrian descent, a liberal Muslim. And now me.’
A well-known figure in Denmark, Hedegaard’s profile rose after the mainstream media’s capitulation in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons affair. He set up the Free Press Society, an organisation which campaigns for the rights of journalists and cartoonists to express themselves without fear of murder. When I addressed them in Copenhagen a couple of years ago, I was given a thank-you present of a mug with the cartoon of Mohammed’s face on the side: a Mo mug. Hedegaard recently launched a newspaper called Dispatch International, which aims to break the silence of the Scandinavian media over issues to do with the EU, climate change, immigration and Islam. Two years ago Hedegaard was put on trial for ‘hate-speech’. He was unanimously acquitted.
But given the areas he has dealt in and what has happened to his colleagues, did he not guess that something like this might -happen?
‘I never speculated about that, because you can’t live your life that way. If every time you sit down to your computer to write something you have this idea in the back of your head, “I may be killed if I write this”, then of course you won’t be as good as you could be. You’ve got to distance yourself from fear if you want to be a true writer and a true intellectual, which is what I’m trying to be.’
And why do people keep trying to silence such defenders of free speech in Denmark, Holland and across Europe? He paraphrases the historian Bernard Lewis: ‘The leaders of the Ummah [Islamic nation] now evidently believe, or want to demonstrate, that Sharia law has already gained force in places like Denmark. In other words it has supplanted our constitution in their minds. Of course it didn’t use to be that way, it used to be the way that you could draw Mohammed or paint him or say whatever you wanted in the Dar al-Harb [‘The Land of War’ — as opposed to the ‘Land of Islam’] because this was outside what Islam considered to be its territory. Now they are implicitly claiming that we are already under Sharia law.’
But what of those who say, ‘Well, he ought to have known. This is what happens if you upset or provoke people’?
‘I don’t want to brag and put myself on a level where I don’t belong, but you could have said the same thing about the White Rose in Germany, the resistance group. They ought to have known that if they said something about Nazism, they would be killed. Or you could say the same thing about the Danish resistance movement during the German occupation. It was said to them: do not go out and sabotage. Collaborate and shut up, otherwise you’ll get to a concentration camp and you’ll be executed. You could have said the same thing to Winston Churchill or the British Army — why the hell make trouble? You know what’s going to happen if you resist — you’ll be killed. Yes, and many of them were.’
‘It’s not because I’m a hero or I want to be a martyr. Far from it. I take it seriously that people, Danish taxpayers many years ago, paid for me to get a university education at a very good university in Denmark, where I learnt about history, humanities, logic and philosophy, and English by the way. I feel an obligation to use my education for what it was meant to be. If not, then you don’t deserve to be educated. If your education is to be used to shut up, placate, downplay, sweet talk, then you are better off being a carpenter.’
And what of the media, which — particularly after the smears around the failed prosecution — have regularly portrayed him as a bigot? Do they have any culpability in this? Hedegaard is reluctant to apportion secondary blame, but finally says this:
‘You can certainly say that if you are constantly presented as an enemy of the people, as I have been, then you are fair game for any lunatic. You cannot blame some lunatics for thinking that you can easily come and kill me, because if you read all this day in and day out, year in and year out, the man is an absolute lunatic and full of lies and bile and what not, you can get him with impunity. Yes, of course I think it plays a role.’
And what happens now? ‘Well, the paper survives, we are more determined than ever that they should not take us down, come what may. What happens to me, I don’t know. I am fully prepared to stay alive to the best of my ability and I am more eager than ever to write my opinion and try to bring it across. Somebody must not like what I’m saying, so that’s all the more reason to continue saying it.’
・This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 16 February 2013
7. Wall Street Journal（http://online.wsj.com）
The Assassin at the Door, 20 February 2013
A Danish free-speech advocate on the day a gunman disguised as a postal worker tried to kill him.
by LARS HEDEGAARD
Copenhagen
A police psychologist has told me that after an attempt on your life, things may appear somewhat fuzzy. After a while details of what happened may all of a sudden become clear as you remember more and more of this most distressing occurrence.
That hasn't been my experience. What took place on Tuesday, Feb. 5, is as clear and vivid to me now as it was seconds after it happened.
Shortly after 11 a.m., I was preparing to leave my apartment for the half-hour commute to my newspaper office in Malmo, Sweden, when the door-phone buzzed. The phone doesn't work properly—I can hear that I have visitors but not communicate with them. Nor can I buzz them in.
I opened a window in my apartment to see who was down below at the front door. A man dressed in a red jacket with the logo of the Danish postal service was waiting at the door. He said he had a package for me. I answered that I couldn't buzz open the door and would instead come downstairs to get the package.
I went down and opened the front door. The man repeated that he had a package, which he handed to me. As I held the package (which the police later determined was empty), he immediately pulled out a gun and fired at my head.
Between my taking the package and the shot there was less than a second, so I had no inkling of what was going on.
The distance between us must have been less than a yard. Nevertheless, he missed. He then proceeded to fumble with the gun in order to cock it for a second shot. I swung my right fist at his head, and my action confused him sufficiently for him to drop the gun. After a scuffle, he recovered the gun but couldn't make it fire. He then fled.
Regrettably, he managed to run off with the gun. The police found a bullet hole in the wall and a cartridge.
I judged my attacker to be around 25 years old and either an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants—most probably from an Arab country or possibly Pakistan. He spoke Danish with no accent.
Since the attempted murder, I have been living under police protection and, as I am 70 years old, will most likely have to do so for the rest of my life.
Despite intensive efforts—the Copenhagen police have set a special 20-man task force to deal with the case—no arrest has been made and consequently no motive can be established.
However, everybody who has commented on the incident has assumed that the motive is political. Some people don't like what I have been saying or writing in recent years, and they want to silence me. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what may have spurred the gunman or those who may have sent him.
For years I have been a campaigner for free speech—since 2004 as president of Denmark's Free Press Society. I have been an outspoken critic of Islamic supremacism and of attempts to impose Islamic Shariah law in Denmark and the West. Together with my Swedish colleague Ingrid Carlqvist, I have recently launched a Swedish-language weekly newspaper called Dispatch International—to the great dissatisfaction of the Swedish mainstream media, which are probably the most politically correct in the Western world and are in absolute agreement on every issue of any consequence.
Dispatch International is critical of mass immigration to Sweden and Denmark from third-world countries and takes a dim view of Islam. As a consequence, we have been reviled as "racist." We are not. We simply insist on our right to defend freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and individual and sexual equality. We also insist on our right to criticize religious fanatics of every stripe who try to impose theocratic laws and customs on free societies.
When I was a young Marxist during the 1960s and '70s, these opinions used to be described as characteristic of the political left. Nowadays the defenders of such positions are routinely labeled as right-wing or as belonging to the "extreme right." Meanwhile, what used to be the left is cozying up to holy men who want adulterous women to be stoned, homosexuals to be hanged, apostates from Islam to be killed, and 1,200-year-old laws emanating from somewhere in the Arabian desert to replace our free constitutions.
In my home country of Denmark, the reaction to the failed murder has mainly been one of horror. Nearly all leading politicians and media have condemned it. To be sure, some newspapers have availed themselves of this opportunity to emphasize what a despicable racist I am, but at least they express their satisfaction that I'm not dead.
Not so in Sweden, where I work most of the time. The Swedish media have either hinted that I have invented the incident in order to set myself up as a martyr—which would have required a major conspiracy involving the Danish police and Security Service—or they seem disappointed that my delivery man was not a better marksman.
What's next?
Unfortunately, the attempt on my life is one in a wave of political assassinations or attempted assassinations that has swept Europe since Ayatollah Khomeini issued his so-called fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. Some have been killed—among them the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn and Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Others, like writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have been forced to flee Europe or go into hiding.
I am determined not to be silenced, come what may. I refuse to live in a world ruled by the gun.
Mr. Hedegaard, a journalist and historian, is the founder of the International Free Press Society and editor in chief of Dispatch International.
・ version of this article appeared February 21, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Assassin at the Door.
8. New York Times （http://www.nytimes.com）
Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak, 27 February 2013
by ANDREW HIGGINS
COPENHAGEN — When a would-be assassin disguised as a postman shot at — and just missed — the head of Lars Hedegaard, an anti-Islam polemicist and former newspaper editor, this month, a cloud of suspicion immediately fell on Denmark’s Muslim minority.
Politicians and pundits united in condemning what they saw as an attempt to stifle free speech in a country that, in 2006, faced violent rage across the Muslim world over a newspaper’s cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Since then, the newspaper that first printed the images, Jyllands-Posten, has been the target of several terrorist plots.
However, as Mr. Hedegaard’s own opinions, a stew of anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts of a coming civil war, came into focus, Denmark’s unity in the face of violence began to dissolve into familiar squabbles over immigration, hate speech and the causes of extremism.
But then something unusual happened. Muslim groups in the country, which were often criticized during the cartoon furor for not speaking out against violence and even deliberately fanning the flames, raised their voices to condemn the attack on Mr. Hedegaard and support his right to express his views, no matter how odious.
The writer, who for several years edited a mainstream Danish daily, Information, is a major figure in what a study last year by a British group, Hope Not Hate, identified as a global movement of “Islamophobic” writers, bloggers and activists whose “anti-Muslim rhetoric poisons the political discourse, sometimes with deadly effect.”
That Danish Muslims would rally to defend Mr. Hedegaard, a man they detest, suggests a significant shift in attitudes, or at least in strategies, by a people at the center of a European debate over whether immigrants from mostly poor Muslim lands can adjust to the values of their new and, thanks to a long economic crisis, increasingly wary and often inhospitable homes.
“They have changed their approach,” said Karen Haekkerup, Denmark’s minister of social affairs and integration. “It is a good sign that the Muslim community is now active in the debate.”
When the news broke on Feb. 5 that Mr. Hedegaard had narrowly escaped an attack on his life, recalled Imran Shah of Copenhagen’s Islamic Society, “we knew that this was something people would try to blame on us. We knew we had to be in the forefront and make clear that political and religious violence is totally unacceptable.”
The Islamic Society, which runs Denmark’s biggest mosque and played an important role in stirring up passions against the cartoons of Muhammad, swiftly condemned the attack on Mr. Hedegaard. It also said it regretted its own role during the uproar over the cartoon, when it sent a delegation to Egypt and Lebanon to sound the alarm over Danish blasphemy, a move that helped turn what had been a little-noticed domestic affair into a bloody international crisis.
Another Islamic organization, Minhaj ul Quran International, the Danish offshoot of a controversial group in Pakistan that has taken a hard line at home against blasphemy, added its own voice, organizing a demonstration outside Copenhagen’s city hall to denounce the attack on Mr. Hedegaard and defend free speech.
“We Muslims have to find a new way of reacting,” said Qaiser Najeeb, a 38-year-old second-generation Dane whose father immigrated from Afghanistan. “Instead of focusing on the real point, we always get aggressive and emotional. This should change. We don’t defend Hedegaard’s views but do defend his right to speak. He can say what he wants.”
The response from native Danes has grown more equivocal over time, with some suggesting Mr. Hedegaard himself provoked violence with his strident views and the activities of his Danish Free Press Society, an organization that he set up in 2004 to defend free expression but that is best known for denouncing Islam.
“I think that Hedegaard wanted this conflict,” Mikael Rothstein, a religious history scholar at the University of Copenhagen, said during a discussion on Danish television, adding that “brutal words can be as strong as the brutal physical act of violence.”
Previously shunned by Denmark’s intellectual and political elite, Mr. Hedegaard, who was uninjured in the attack and is living in a safe house under police protection, has been front-page news, even in newspapers that consider him a deliberately provocative racist, which he denies.
Surfacing last week from a safe house for a meeting in the Danish Parliament organized by his Free Press Society, Mr. Hedegaard received a standing ovation after a speech in which he said, “I don’t have a problem with Muslims but do have a problem with the religion of Islam.”
Asmat Ullah Mojadeddi, a medical doctor and the chairman of the Muslim Council of Denmark, a group set up after the cartoon crisis to counter radical Muslims prominent in the news media, described Mr. Hedegaard as a mirror image of reckless Muslims who shoot off their mouths heedless of the consequences.
“There are stupid people everywhere,” Dr. Mojadeddi said. “Mr. Hedegaard is an extremist, and there are definitely extremist Muslims.”
Hoping to take advantage of the furor stirred by the attack, a tiny but vociferous anti-Muslim outfit called Stop the Islamization of Europe organized a rally Saturday in central Copenhagen. Its leader, Anders Gravers, a xenophobic butcher from the north, fulminated against Muslims and the spread of halal meats, but only 20 people turned up to show support. There were many more police officers, on hand to prevent clashes with a larger counterdemonstration nearby.
Who tried to kill Mr. Hedegaard is still a mystery. In an e-mail, he wrote, “My attacker was an immigrant or descendant of immigrants — Arab or Pakistani. He spoke Danish with no accent.”
Mr. Hedegaard described how a man dressed in a postal worker’s jacket had come to his apartment building to deliver a parcel, and, “as I was standing with the package in my hands, he immediately pulled out a gun and fired at my head,” he said. Though less than a yard away, the gunman missed and fled after a struggle, Mr. Hedegaard said.
The attack followed a failed ax attack in 2010 by a Somali Muslim on Kurt Westergaard, the artist who drew a cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, and a foiled plot to behead journalists at the office of the newspaper that first published that cartoon and 11 others in September 2005.
Mr. Hedegaard and his Free Press Society championed the newspaper’s right to publish. They also railed against those in Denmark who seemed to contend that the newspaper’s lack of respect for Muslim sensitivities deserved much of the blame for the violent reaction in Muslim countries, which included attacks on Danish diplomatic missions in Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
Mr. Hedegaard has also fanned wild conspiracy theories and sometimes veered into calumny. At a private gathering at his home in December 2009, he declared that Muslims “rape their own children. It is heard of all the time. Girls in Muslim families are raped by their uncles, their cousins or their fathers.”
The comments, recorded by a journalist, later appeared online and led to legal action under a Danish law that prohibits racist hate speech. Mr. Hedegaard was convicted but later acquitted by the Supreme Court.
In an e-mail, he did not deny making the remarks that led to his prosecution but said he had not given permission for them to be published.
He said he was skeptical that Muslims had changed their attitudes, or even could shift toward greater accommodation of European norms.
“There is no such thing as ‘moderate’ Islam, and there never has been,” Mr. Hedegaard said. “There may be shades of opinion among Muslims, but as a totalitarian system of thought, Islam has remained unchanged for at least 1,200 years.”
・A version of this article appeared in print on February 28, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak．
9. Minnesota Prager Discussion Group (http://mnprager.wordpress.com)
Dennis Prager Interviews Dane, Lars Hedegaard, a Marxist Rarity Who Defends Truth and Basic Human Freedoms, 5 March 2013
by Glenn H. Ray
“The Left Now Seems To Have Reverence for Fanatics”
This is an edited version of the interview with Lars Hedegaard that took place on Dennis Prager’s nationally syndicated radio show. The entire unedited interview may be heard DENNIS PRAGER: Are you in Copenhagen as we speak?
LARS HEDEGAARD: I can’t really tell you where I am at the moment.
DP: Can you tell me what country?
LH: I’m in Europe somewhere.
DP: The reason you can’t tell is that there was an attempt to murder you just a few weeks ago. A man came to your door, speaking perfect Danish. Tell us what happened.
LH: There was a buzz on my door phone, and a man said he had a package for me, in accent-free Danish. He was, I’m certain, an immigrant from some Arab country or possibly Pakistan. I went down to get the package, and as soon as I opened the front door he pulled out a gun and shot at my head. He missed, and there was a struggle between us. I tried to hit him in the face which made him lose the gun. He then recovered it and tried to cock it for a second shot, and he didn’t manage to do that. And we fought some more, and then he grabbed the gun and ran off. That’s what happened.
DP: You were nearly murdered. What did you write and what are you fighting for?
LH: I don’t know exactly what motivated the attack. I’ve been writing on Islam, Islamic history and Islamic ideology for about ten years. I haven’t done anything differently recently except that we started our new newspaper, the weekly Dispatch International, on the third of January. It’s a Swedish language newspaper, but we have an online edition in English.
I’ve been wondering, of course, why someone wanted to shoot me, and I cannot think of anything that I’ve done differently recently than what I have been doing these last couple of years. I’ve been called a hate speaker, and I’m not a hate speaker. I’ve been called a racist, and I’m not a racist. I’m just a normal historian and a journalist. It’s my job to describe what’s going on in the world, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do to the best of my abilities.
DP: Correct me if I’m wrong: You are a man of the left.
LH: Yes.
DP: Where are the attacks on you being racist coming from? What part of the ideological spectrum?
LH: I would say almost exclusively from the left. (Of course, also from Muslims. Not all Muslims, but some.) I seem to be very unpopular with my old friends. I think the problem is that I know what it’s all about to be left-wing; I used to be a leading Marxist in this country. But I’ve held to the opinion that we first of all have to fight for free speech and freedom and equality between the sexes and the rule of law; and also, that we should not bow before religious fanatics of any type, regardless of where they come from. This seems to me what was the essence of being left-wing back in the days. No longer.
The left now seems to have reverence for fanatics — as long as they are Muslim. Of course, they can criticize Christianity all they want. But when somebody threatens with violence — if you criticize me, I’ll come and kill you — then all of a sudden they become soft. They become understanding. They talk about tolerance; we have to show respect. I don’t want to show respect for people who say that men are worth more than women, that women can be killed if they are adulterers; that apostates from Islam should be killed; that people should be stoned, etc. I mean, I don’t like that. I want to fight that. I want to describe it. And I don’t think the left does.
DP: I think it comes with greater credibility to many when you say this, as a man of the left, than when I say this. I share every moral sentiment you have just stated and I am considered, in America, conservative.
LH: Well, good for you. Many of my friends are conservative.
DP: I’m sure more and more are.
LH: Can we disagree on politics in a civilized manner? Can we stop killing each other? Threatening each other? That is my point. Can we maintain free speech — the First Amendment?
DP: You write in your Wall Street Journal article that in your home county of Denmark, “some newspapers have availed themselves of this opportunity to emphasize what a despicable racist I am. But at least they express their satisfaction I am not dead. Not so in Sweden. They seem disappointed that my delivery man was not a better marksman.”
DP: And Sweden is more left than perhaps anywhere else in Europe.
LH: I wouldn’t exactly describe it as left. It’s more politically correct.
DP: Forgive me, but political correctness is a brainchild of the left.
LH: It is. It is indeed. I’ve got to admit that.
I think among all the countries in Europe, Sweden has the most politically correct media. They are in absolute agreement on anything you can imagine, from man-made warming of the world to Islam. And any deviation from the line will be considered a sin.
DP: Do you still call yourself a Marxist?
LH: Yes, to some extent. I don’t believe in the desirability or inevitability of revolution or socialism. But some of the analytical terms of Marxism I still use to the great amazement of my friends, who think I’m an idiot. But I stick to that.
DP: Is there any way for us to support your work for freedom, other than reading your work? Can we sign up for anything, do you take money?
LH: Well, you can subscribe to the paper [Dispatch International] in English online. By the way, I am suing the Swedish media for libel, and there is a donate button on our website http://www.d-intl.com. I think it’ll be a big thing. They have been lying through their teeth.
DP: What have they been saying?
LH: They’ve been saying that I’m a convicted racist, and the fact is, I’ve been acquitted by a unanimous Danish supreme court.
DP: In America, at least as of this moment, there is no such thing as being convicted as a racist. You are free in this country to say what you like.
LH: I know that.
DP: Europe does not have that.
LH: We do not. We don’t have your First Amendment. The Free Press Society has been fighting for nine years to introduce a first amendment in Denmark and other places in Europe. We don’t have that. We have an article in our penal code called 266(b), which means that you can be convicted of hate speech, racism, denigration of religion, or a number of things, which is despicable.
I agree with the American Constitution — you should be able to say anything you want, and if you’re an idiot or a jerk you should be corrected by other people. You can lose your career, you can lose your reputation if you talk ill of people because of their race, which I have never done. But you should have the right to say anything. You should have laws against libel, lying about people, threatening people with violence, revealing state secrets, etc. You have that in any civilized country. But apart from that, I agree with the First Amendment. We don’t have it here.
DP: I’ll tell you another thing you don’t have there, which I periodically say to Europeans that I have on my show: You don’t have talk radio. This has been a major factor in America in offering the alternate universe to that which the Swedish press and the American left, such as the New York Times, which would be perfectly at home in Stockholm, present to us.
LH: You’re right. Speaking about the New York Times, they had an article today about me, that I’m full of “bile and viciousness and racism” and what-not. No, we don’t have talk radio. What we do have is state radio, something that the people are forced to support by their tax dollars.
DP: Thank you. Good luck to you.
(End)
