Flemming Rose

Flemming Rose (born March 11, 1958) is a Danish journalist, author and since 2010 foreign affairs editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. As culture editor of the same newspaper, he was principally responsible for the September 2005 publication of the cartoons that initiated the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy early the next year, and since then he has been an international advocate of the freedom of speech.

Rose grew up in Copenhagen. He was one of three children. His father left the family when Rose was a small boy, and they were out of touch for decades. After the cartoon crisis, his father wrote him a letter suggesting that they meet and expressing his agreement with Rose's position on the cartoons. As a result, they met and reconciled.

Rose graduated with a degree in Russian language and literature from University of Copenhagen. From 1980 to 1996 he was the Moscow correspondent for the newspaper Berlingske Tidende. Between 1996 and 1999 he was that newspaper's correspondent in Washington, D.C. In 1999 he became Moscow correspondent for Jyllands-Posten and in April 2004 was named its cultural editor, replacing Sven Bedsted. Since 2010, he has been the paper's foreign affairs editor. In November 2015, Rose announced that he was leaving Jyllands-Posten.

Rose is best known for commissioning a group of drawings of Muhammad that were published in Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. His reasoning was that many European creative artists had engaged in self-censorship out of fear of Muslim violence. The immediate trigger for the commission was the case of the Danish children's book author Kåre Bluitgen, who reportedly couldn't find an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Jyllands-Posten invited Danish illustrators to depict Muhammad "as you see him." Not all of the cartoons submitted in response to his invitation featured images of Muhammed. Two of them caricatured Bluitgen, one mocked Jyllands-Posten itself, while others caricatured Danish politicians. The most famous of the cartoons, by Kurt Westergaard, depicted Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

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