Danish Library Plans to House Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad

Denmark's national library is to risk re-opening an international political storm by housing the cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad that provoked violent convulsions throughout the Islamic world two years ago.

The royal library in Copenhagen - founded in the 17th century by King Frederik III and home to many historic treasures - has declared the drawings to be of historic value and is trying to acquire them for "preservation purposes".

The library, widely acknowledged as the most significant in Scandinavia, has agreed to take possession of the caricatures on behalf of the museum of Danish cartoon art, a spokesman told the Art Newspaper.

Negotiations with the artists behind the 12 cartoons are said to be at an advanced stage. Several have agreed to donate the works for mothing but the museum may have to buy some of them. One has already been sold to a private buyer.

Around 100 people died in riots across the Muslim world as protests spread after the publication of the cartoons - one of which depicted Muhammad with a bomb in his turban - in numerous western newspapers in 2006. The disturbances led to Denmark's embassy in Damascus being burned and diplomatic missions in several other Muslim countries being attacked. The cartoons originally appeared in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005.

Jytte Kjaergaard, a spokeswoman for the library, said they were unlikely to be displayed publicly and insisted the decision was not intended to be controversial.

"We are not interested in an exhibition, we are interested in them being kept safe for future generations because they have created history in Denmark," she told the Guardian. "This is the obvious place to keep them because we have all the security measures in place.

"It would be very difficult for a private person to come in and sabotage them because to see them for research purposes you will need a letter of consent from your university professor. They will be treated like any rare book."

The library does not expect to have to pay large sums for the cartoons, after Denmark's main auction houses declined to handle any proposed sale.

However, another Danish museum has expressed interest in including the cartoons in an exhibition about freedom of expression. Ervin Nielsen, the director of the Danish media museum in O dense, said: "If the library acquires them, we would like to show them together with media reports about the publication and the protests against it."

He said the feature would also cover the violent aftermath of the cartoon controversy. "As we would document the incidents around the publication and not simply show the works, I do not expect strong reactions," he said. "We do not want to provoke, but inform."

Claus Seidel, one of the artists and the head of Denmark's cartoonists' association, said the artists had stored their works in secure places since the controversy broke. "Most of them find this [giving them to the royal library] to be the right thing to do," he said.

Kasem Said Ahmad, spokesman for the Danish Muslim Society, which headed the original campaign against the cartoons, called the library's decision a "provocation" but said his organization would ignore it as part of its new strategy. "We will not be holding any demonstrations as we got nothing from the Danish courts when we tried to sue the newspapers. We will ignore all provocations in future."