Thursday marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the 12 drawings in Jyllands-Posten which one year later became a major global controversy leading to dozens of deaths.
Flemming Rose's book The Tyranny of Silence has fed worries of renewed unrest, similar to when the cartoons were reprinted by many newspapers in 2008 after a death threat to cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
Danish Foreign Minister Lene Espersen met 17 ambassadors from Muslim countries on Wednesday as part of efforts to prevent any new cartoon crisis.
"The violence was committed by people who made a decision to react to these cartoons in a specific way," said Mr Rose, who has lived for years under police protection because of threats against him and his paper Jyllands-Posten.
"To publish cartoons, religious satire, in a Danish newspaper is not incitation to violence," he said.
Most Muslims consider depictions of the founder of Islam offensive, and one cartoon showing the Prophet with a bomb in his turban was found especially insulting.
Mr Rose said he did not regret initiating publication of the cartoons in 2005 to begin a debate on freedom of expression in Denmark.
But he added: "Of course, I do believe that no cartoon is worth a single human life – unfortunately there are some other people who think otherwise."
The book launch came a day after police said an Iraqi Kurd in Norway admitted to plotting an attack on Jyllands-Posten and two weeks after police said the daily was the probable target of a would-be bomber in Copenhagen.
Telegraph
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