The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) invites you to an online roundtable on
Wednesday, January 24, 2024 to hear from leading experts on political violence
and free speech on the complex question of how democracies should respond to
blasphemy terrorism.





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CEP Online Roundtable: Responding To Blasphemy


(New York, N.Y.) – The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) invites you to an
online roundtable on Wednesday, January 24, 2024 to hear from leading experts
on political violence and free speech on the complex question of how
democracies should respond to blasphemy terrorism.



In December, Denmark’s parliament passed a controversial law which prohibits
the “inappropriate treatment” of religious texts, although the bill has been
widely referred to as the “Quran law”, since it was introduced following
incidents of public Quran burnings which thrust both Denmark and Sweden into
the center of a global backlash – and once again into the crosshairs of
jihadist terrorists.



Blasphemy violence has been a feature of the Western security landscape since
at least the Rushdie affair of 1989. However, both Denmark and Sweden have felt
the pressure emanating from blasphemy controversies in the past, Denmark
following the 2005 Jyllands-Posten cartoons affair, and Sweden after the
cartoonist Lars Vilks’ controversial depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. These
incidents not only sparked years of terrorist threats against both countries,
but immense diplomatic and economic pressure which has informed the latest
Danish legislation.



As such blasphemy ‘affairs’ look sure to continue, how should liberal
democracies respond to the inevitable threats and violence which accompany
them? Is Denmark’s response a model for other states or should the French model
be followed. The French government has always been unapologetic in its defense
of liberté d’expression. The government maintained this position even after the
massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel
Paty in Paris in 2020 after he allegedly showed pictures of the Mohammad
cartoons in a class on free speech, resulting in a short but intense online
campaign against him led by parents and some of his pupils.



To explore these questions and more, CEP Advisor and author of a recent report
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on blasphemy, Liam Duffy, will be joined by two U.S.-based Danish experts:



Dr. Jytte Klausen, professor at Brandeis University and author of The Cartoons
that Shook the World, the definitive account of the 2005 Jyllands-Posten
affair, and more recently, Western Jihadism: A Thirty Year History



Jacob Mchangama, the CEO of a human rights think tank, Justitia, Executive
Director of the Future of Free Speech Project at Vanderbilt University and
author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media



The webinar will be conducted in English via Zoom.



Date: January 24, 2024

Time: 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. ET / 15:00 – 16:30 GMT / 16:00 – 17:30 CET



REGISTRATION:



To participate in this webinar please register via this link:

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Please register up to one hour before the webinar start so that your
registration can be approved in time.



Please feel free to forward this invitation to colleagues with an interest in
the subject.



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