Freedom fighter …

… The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Criticizing Islam didn’t constitute a legal offense, but the social pressure to tread softly was immense. The cartoon was a way to insist on freedom of speech and to show the extent to which it was threatened in some of the world’s leading democracies. “Should it not be considered a mark of civilization that in the face of barbaric violence, we respond only with a cartoonist’s pencil?” Rose asks. Still, Muslims around the world erupted in protest; Danish embassies were attacked; a Somali Muslim broke into cartoonist Westergaard’s home wielding an axe and a knife; the newspaper’s offices were evacuated because of bomb scares; and Danmarks Radio, Denmark’s leading public-service media, asked Rose how many bombs had to go off before he apologized.