The Cartoons that Shook the World

The Cartoons that Shook the World is a 2009 book by Brandeis University professor Jytte Klausen about the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. Klausen contends that the controversy was deliberately stoked up by people with vested interests on all sides, and argues against the view that it was based on a cultural misunderstanding about the depiction of Muhammad. The book itself caused controversy before its publication when Yale University Press removed all images from the book, including the controversial cartoons themselves and some other images of Muhammad.

The book was scheduled to be published in November 2009 by Yale University Press. Prior to publication, officials at the Press decided to remove all images of Muhammad from the forthcoming book, including all of the controversial cartoons and a number of historical images of Muhammad from both Muslim and non-Muslim sources, including a 19th-century engraving by Gustave Doré showing Muhammad being tormented in a scene from Dante's Inferno According to the Yale Daily News, the story first broke in the New York Times on Thursday, August 13, 2009.

The Press defended its decision, releasing a statement explaining that the University had consulted counterterrorism officials, the highest-level Muslim official at the United Nations, foreign ambassadors from Muslim countries, and Islamic Studies scholars, and that they had "all" voiced serious fears about provoking more violence.

Sheila Blair, Calderwood Professor of Fine Arts at Boston College and an expert on the art of the Islamic world was one of the authorities consulted by the Yale University Press. She told The Guardian that she had "strongly urged" the Press to publish the images since, "To deny that such images were made is to distort the historical record and to bow to the biased view of some modern zealots who would deny that others at other times and places perceived and illustrated Muhammad in different ways."

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