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Publisher bans images of Muhammad in new book

Yale University Press has decided against reprinting the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a book examining the controversy, after being advised by Islam and counterterrorism experts that doing so could incite violence.

As well as leaving out the 12 cartoons which provoked riots across the Islamic world in 2006, Yale also bowed to recommendations not to include any other illustrations of Muhammad, including a 19th century sketch by Gustave Doré of Muhammad in Hell from Dante's Inferno, in the book, The Cartoons That Shook the World.

Author Jytte Klausen said the book had been ready to go to print when the illustrations were pulled, after Yale received some "quite alarmist" statements from experts to whom it had sent the title. A professor of politics at a Massachusetts university, Klausen argued for inclusion of the cartoons in the book, which is due out in November in the US and January in the UK. "People think they know the cartoons and actually, by printing the cartoons, I'm arguing that some of them are Islamophobic, and in the tradition of anti-Semitism. If we can't look at them, how can we discuss this?" she said today.

Read entire article at Guardian (UK)