AARHUS, Denmark — “I think this is safe house No. 5,” Kurt Westergaard said the other day, and it was clear that he genuinely had lost track.

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Derrick Butler for The New York Times

Kurt Westergaard at the paper Jyllands-Posten. His cartoon was one of 12 that led to protests.

Last month the Danish police arrested two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan descent on charges of plotting to kill Mr. Westergaard, one of the 12 cartoonists whose pictures of Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten sparked protests, some of them violent, by Muslims around the world in 2006 and put bounties on the heads of Mr. Westergaard and his editor, Flemming Rose. Mr. Westergaard (he drew Muhammad with a bomb in his turban) has been in hiding ever since.

Americans, for whom the presidential election seems to have become a delirious, unending sport, preoccupying their attention, turn out not to be the only ones who preferred to forget about the cartoons. So had many Danes and fellow Europeans. They were shocked by the arrests.

In the days shortly after, 17 Danish newspapers, having declined to publish the offending cartoons two years ago, declared solidarity with Mr. Westergaard and printed them. This, naturally, provoked a fresh round of protests from Gaza to Indonesia.

In Egypt the speaker of the Parliament claimed Danes had violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which seemed a little rich coming just a few weeks after the European Parliament, which itself complained about the cartoons’ re-publication, condemned Egypt for the sorry state of its human rights.

Meanwhile demands in Afghanistan for the instant withdrawal of Danish troops under NATO’s command and the severing of all diplomatic ties with Denmark caused Denmark’s foreign minister, Per Stig Moeller, to reply that it was becoming difficult for him “to put Danish soldiers’ lives in danger” to support a country “where one is at risk to be condemned to death for values that we believe to be an inseparable part of democracy and the modern world.”

And then, while it still seemed just a Danish problem, trouble spread. A gallery in Berlin was shut because an exhibition of satirical art by a Danish group called Surrend, which has previously produced works mocking neo-Nazis, caused several angry Muslim visitors to threaten violence unless a poster depicting the Kaaba, the shrine in Mecca’s Grand Mosque, was removed.

Two years earlier, in the wake of the original cartoon imbroglio, a Berlin opera company canceled performances of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” when police warned the company that a scene with the severed head of Muhammad, among other religious figures, posed “incalculable risk” to the performers and audience. Cries of self-censorship erupted across Europe.

This time around Germany’s interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, a politician who has been conspicuous in working to improve relations with Muslims in Germany, was reported to have urged other newspapers in Europe to reprint the cartoons, a remark he strongly denied making, which made no difference to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan.

“The German minister is required to immediately withdraw his statement,” Al-Watan demanded. Racism, not freedom of speech, was obviously behind Germany policy, the newspaper added. After all, Germans aren’t free to “discuss the Jewish Holocaust.”

And everybody knew what that meant.

Now many Europeans seem fed up. Over dinner in Copenhagen recently, Mr. Rose, who has made something of a second career out of the cartoon fallout, said it all came late but was inevitable.

“At the time, in 2006, there were good journalistic reasons for other newspapers to publish the cartoons because few people had seen them then, so they were news,” he said. “Now the journalistic justification is almost nonexistent because everyone knows what they look like, so it’s more about solidarity than about news.”

Unlike Mr. Westergaard, Mr. Rose doesn’t live in safe houses, although he long ago removed his name from the local telephone directory and has learned that a different Flemming Rose (there are apparently several in Denmark) decided to change his name.

“It was not about mocking a minority but a religious figure, the Prophet, so it was blasphemy, not racism,” Mr. Rose said of the cartoons. “The idea of challenging religious authority led to liberal democracy, whereas the singling out of minorities, as minorities, led to Nazism and the persecution of the bourgeoisie in Russia. So this distinction is crucial to understand.”

It's a man's world: Steve Carell

Comments

Waxing my chest for The 40-Year-Old Virgin was excruciating. The blood was real. They hired an actress who said she had waxing experience ? waxing was on her CV. My wife freaked out when I got home. She made me wear a T-shirt around the house for months. Tweezing, coiffing and waxing every errant hair seems weird to me. I have better ways of spending my time.

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Steve Carell says women want a man who is sexy and funny

Everyone says women find funny men sexy, but it's not true. They always say, 'A sense of humour, someone who's witty.' I don't believe them. They want a man like George Clooney who is funny and good-looking. Women like men to look hot.

I just bought a Dolce & Gabbana suit for a couple of thousand dollars ? now that was scary. I justified it by writing it off as a business expense ? 'This is something I need for glamorous appearances and interviews.' I am one of those people who mathematically breaks down how many times I will wear it. If I wear it 20 times it will cost me a hundred dollars a time. I prefer to splurge on things like my really amazing Dyson vacuum cleaner. And I would like a great panini press to make grilled Italian sandwiches. I'll treat myself to one soon.

My six-year-old daughter Annie is the arbiter of my style. I always run everything by her. The other day I was about to walk out of the door and she looked me up and down and said, "No, Dad, those shoes just don't work for you."

What I lack in physical ability I make up for in co-ordination. I play ice hockey in a league in Los Angeles. We're very, very bad, but we have a good time. I've chipped my two front teeth and dislocated and broken and strained and pulled all sorts of things. And that's playing just once a week. I also work out with weights and run five or six miles three times a week. I find myself listening to female pop when I'm training ? Pink and Sheryl Crow. I also like dance music.

I had to become really fit for my new film, Get Smart. I had some serious fight scenes with The Rock [Dwayne Johnson]. He is tough. When I grabbed him, there was nothing to grab on to, because he's solid muscle. He inspired me to work out hard and get in decent shape. Never in a million years did I think I'd be starring in an action film beating up bad guys, hanging off the side of a car or jumping out of a moving plane. It's not easy to say your lines while fighting on top of a car before being hit by a swinging crane.

I have the most amazing piece of fitness equipment. It's called Perfect Push Up, and it's supposed to give you huge arms and "cut" abs. It was developed by a US Navy Seal. It has handles that rest inside a circular case and they enable you to twist or rotate your hands when you do push-ups, which makes you use your arms and your chest at the same time, so you get a much better workout.

My bushy eyebrows don't bother me. A newspaper had a picture of me along with a panel of eyebrow pundits weighing in on what I should do with mine. If I thinned them down to pencils I'd look drastically different, but it wouldn't be who I am. My eyebrows don't join together and they're not that unruly and outlandish.

I think it's a bit strange when guys get fussy about grooming. If men pay too much attention to their appearance, they have some kind of psychological problems lurking somewhere. It's not for me.

• 'Get Smart' is released on August 15.