Documentary explores Mohammed cartoons

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Some Muslim leaders who inspired a violent reaction to cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed had never seen them, a Danish documentary film says.

The documentary directed by Karsen Kjaer airs Sunday on Danish public television, The Copenhagen Post reported. The film is titled “Those Damned Drawings,” the 12 cartoons run by the newspaper Jyllands- Posten.

In the film, Kjaer shows the cartoons to Sheik Yussuf Al-Qaradawi, who used his television program to declare Feb. 3, 2006, “Anger Day” and to Ali Bakhsi, who led demonstrations in Iran that ended with the burning of the Danish embassy. Both men were apparently seeing them for the first time, and Bakhsi even laughs and says that one image looks more like an Indian Sikh than the Prophet Mohammed.

Kjaer also interviewed Flemming Rose, the newspaper culture editor who decided to run the cartoons.

“I've sought to be objective about the crisis' factual events,“ Kjaer told public broadcaster DR. “But it is also a very personal film that portrays my travels around the Middle East and my own impression of both the causes and consequences of the conflict brought about by the 12 drawings.”