Flemming Rose, editor of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, is not apologizing for publishing the dreaded cartoons of blasphemy.

“There was a legitimate news story we had to cover and we chose to cover it in a not very ordinary way,” he said, referring to the letter he sent in September to 40 cartoonists asking them to draw the prophet as they saw him.

“My intention was to have them appear under their own name and go against this tendency to self-censorship,” Flemming said. “I did not ask them to make (the prophet) a laughing stock or to mock him or to make fun of him. But because we do have a tradition of satire in Denmark, some of the cartoonists, in fact, did make satirical cartoons, but that is what we do with Jesus Christ and that is what we do with the royal family and with politicians,” he said.

“So in fact the cartoonists were just treating Islam and Muslims in the same way they would treat everybody else.”

He acknowledged that his newspaper two years ago had declined to publish satirical cartoons depicting Jesus Christ, but said the current situation was not comparable, and noted that over the years Jyllands-Posten had printed cartoons deemed offensive by Christians, Jews and other religions.

When asked whether he regretted his decision to publish the Mohammed cartoons, in light of the firestorm they unleashed in the Islamic world and threats against him, Flemming said it was like asking a rape victim whether she regretted wearing a short skirt. “What I did did not transcend normal practice,” he said.