“Cartooning itself has become a bit of a dangerous area,” says Dan Leger, the paper’s news director. He invited the group [of Muslims] in for a meeting and explained that a cartoonist’s job is to make fun of everybody. The meeting ended on a friendly note, and with luck that will be the end of it. “Cartoons are meant to piss you off,” says Mr. Leger. “Otherwise they’re no good.”
But it’s Europe where cartooning and Islam really don’t mix. In the Netherlands, eight police officers showed up recently to arrest an obscure cartoonist for sketching offensive drawings of Muslims that appeared mainly on his own website. He spent two nights in jail, and Dutch authorities are deciding whether to charge him with inciting racist hatred.
