The government and other parties announce their position on the mandatory teaching of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish schools.

According to TV2, Danish Minister for Children and Education Mattias Tesfaye addressed the government's stance on the proposal to make the teaching of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad mandatory in Danish schools. He stated that "the government has rejected the proposal to make the teaching of cartoons about Muhammad mandatory, while leaving it optional for teachers." He added, "It should never be a problem if a teacher teaches or displays cartoons of Muhammad." According to the source, the minister does not believe the proposed legislation "solves any problem," and therefore the government will not support it. He argued that the proposed law risks placing teachers in an uncertain position with no choice, adding that the bill offers "the right diagnosis, but the wrong medicine.".

This stance from the government comes despite the fact that, prior to the elections, the Venstre Liberal Party – which is part of the current government with several ministerial portfolios – supported making education about the Prophet Muhammad crisis mandatory in Danish schools, but the party has now changed its position.

The parties' positions on the issue

The proposed resolution had been presented several times in the Danish parliament before the last general election in November 2022 and the proposal had already received a majority in its favor, but after the formation of the government the Liberal Party changed its position and is now against it, and instead the government will launch a “mapping” of the extent of self-regulation in education.

Among the previous supporters of the proposal was the SF party, which belongs to the Red Bloc and was a supporter of the previous government when the Social Democratic government promised to call for negotiations on an education framework in the Mohammed crisis, but the negotiations were halted due to the general election in 2022.

In addition to the SF party, the bill is supported by the Danish People’s Party, the Conservative Party, the Democrats of Denmark, the Liberal Alliance, and the New Bourgeoisie, on the grounds of “defending the freedom of expression of the teacher and the school,“ based on the premise that the relevant authorities should prepare the curricula in a way that “does not require the teacher or the school alone to prepare the material themselves.”.

When the resolution proposal was first introduced in 2021, it was at the initiative of Mette Thiesen, then a member of the New Bourgeois Party (Nye Borgerlige), who describes the government’s rejection today as a “complete failure.”.

Spokesperson Annie Mathiesen of the Finnish Liberal Party defended the party's change of position from support to rejection, telling the Jyllands-Posten newspaper (the newspaper that published the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005) that "the clear safety assessment is that the proposed decision will not remove the danger to the individual teacher.".

Clear examples regarding teacher safety in relation to this issue, according to the source.

Part of the proposed resolution also relates to updating school security preparedness plans to deal with potential conflicts regarding the use of educational materials about the Prophet Muhammad crisis. In October 2020, history and geography teacher Samuel Paty, 47, was killed after showing a satirical drawing of the Prophet Muhammad during lessons on freedom of expression at the Collège Bois-d'Aulne school in a suburb of Paris. An 18-year-old Muslim youth of Chechen origin stabbed the teacher in the neck in the open street as the teacher was on his way home from school. French police then shot and killed the perpetrator.

Following this, a Danish teacher wrote on Facebook that Muhammad's drawings would henceforth be included in his teachings "out of respect for our brave colleague in Paris. And to guarantee the foundation of our work: freedom of expression." The person then received so many threats that the police advised him that same evening to remove the post and move to a secret address.

A primary school teacher told the Berlingske newspaper that she was ostracized by her colleagues to the point that she became ill and lost her job.

Last year, the Copenhagen municipality advised a teacher to reduce her use of Muhammad drawings in education, which she had tried to sell to primary schools in the municipality. One of the reasons given at the time was that “the very direct focus on Muhammad drawings discourages teachers from the teaching process,” according to TV2, citing an email seen by Alting.