Lars Hedegaard

Lars Hedegaard (born 19 September 1942) is a Danish author, historian, editor, journalist and critic of Islam. He established the International Free Press Society in 2009, an extension of the Danish Free Press Society founded in 2004, of which he served as chairman until 2014. Hedegaard was the subject of an assassination attempt in 2013, after which he has lived under police protection.

Career
Hedegaard was born in Horsens. He received a cand.phil. degree in history from Aarhus University in 1971, and a cand.mag. in English from the University of Copenhagen in 1973. At first a high school teacher, he later worked as an editorial publisher of Sage Publishing in Los Angeles in the mid-to-late 1970s. He was also one of the editors and driving forces behind the Fundamental historie series of modern history books around the same time. A self-described Marxist, he was politically active as a member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party until 1982. He was the editor of the Politiken publishing house in the early 1980s, and the chief editor of Dagbladet Information in the late 1980s, until he was forced to leave the left-wing newspaper after he helped expose the far-left Blekingegade Gang. He was an editor for the Nordic Council throughout the 1990s, and became part of the editorial column "Roughly Said" for Berlingske Tidende in 1998, until he was fired from the newspaper in 2008.

Criticism of Islam
Hedegaard became known as a critic of Islam after the September 11 attacks in 2001. He co-authored the book I krigens hus: Islams kolonisering af Vesten about Islam's "colonisation of the West" in the "house of war" with Helle Merete Brix in 2003, which has been described as a part of the "Eurabia narrative". He founded the Danish Free Press Society in 2004 after Danish PEN objected to admit him as a member due to his writings in I krigens hus, and established the International Free Press Society in 2009, which has been described as a central networking hub for the counter-jihad movement. Hedegaard has been described as a part of the counter-jihad movement,  having participated in several of the international counter-jihad conferences since 2007.

He was a member of the Danish People's Party, although it was not publicly known, until resigning his membership in 2010 due to his hate speech trial. He joined the New Right party in 2016. In 2014 he released an animated film that he co-produced with Pakistani filmmaker Imran Firasat entitled Aisha and Muhammad, which focuses on the life of the fifty-year-old Islamic prophet Muhammad and his marriage to a then six-year-old Aisha. He has also collaborated with Lars Vilks, known for his Muhammad drawings controversy. In 2016, Hedegaard participated in a "counterjihad" panel at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the United States, sponsored by Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy.

Hedegaard has authored two volumes of autobiographies, Verden var så rød, mor, about the period 1942–80, and Ræven går derude, mor, about the period 1980–2011. He received the Raoul Wallenberg Medal in 2005, and the Defender of Freedom Award and the Niels Ebbesen Medal in 2012. Also in 2012, the Danish Free Press Society published a 302-page Festschrift to Hedegaard, titled Frem for alt frihed: festskrift til Lars Hedegaard, with over twenty-one main contributors, both Danish and international.

Hate speech trial
In 2011, Hedegaard was first acquitted, but thereafter convicted of hate speech under the Article 266b, and fined 5,000 kr. He had made critical remarks against the Islamic society, which included "girls in Muslim families are raped by their uncles, their cousins, or their dad." The first acquittal came as the statements were made in an interview with the blog Snaphanen that was not intended for a wider audience. Hedegaard later clarified that he did not intend to accuse all the Muslims of abusing their children. He appealed the second verdict, and in 2012, the Supreme Court of Denmark acquitted him in a 7–0 decision.

Assassination attempt
On 5 February 2013, a gunman posing as a postman attempted to shoot Hedegaard at his home. The gunshot narrowly missed his head, and the assailant escaped after a scuffle. The Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt condemned the attack and said the case was even more severe if the motive was to prevent Hedegaard from using his free speech. Danish Muslims responded by rallying to defend Hedegaard and to defend his right to free speech. The Islam Society, which had been heavily involved in the protest against the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons and helped to publicise their opposition internationally, stated that it regretted its role during the controversy, and the Danish branch of Minhaj-ul-Quran demonstrated outside the City Hall in defence of Hedegaard and free speech.

Since the attack, Hedegaard has been constantly guarded by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), and has had to live in hiding in a rural place in Denmark on a secret address. He has said that the high rent cost of the highly secured residence offered to him by PET has ruined him financially. He went on a leave of absence as chairman of the Danish Free Press Society after the assassination attempt, and finally left the position to Katrine Winkel Holm in 2014. He wrote a book about the assassination attempt in 2015, titled Attentatet. He was thereafter charged with naming the suspected shooter in his book against a court prohibition, and in 2016 sentenced to a fine of 10,000 kr.

In November 2016, the US State Department issued a note, designating three persons as terror-operatives, one of whom was Basil Hassan, an external operations plotter for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who was accused of having attempted to shoot Hedegaard. Hassan was said to have been released as part of an alleged exchange for 49 hostages held by ISIL after having been arrested in Turkey in 2014, and was believed to have travelled to Syria to join ISIL after his release. The prohibition on naming Hassan by a Danish court was lifted in December 2016.

Personal life
Hedegaard has been married twice. In 1969, he converted to Judaism in conjunction with his marriage to his first wife, Jewish-American Barbara Levin. Hedegaard has three children and one step-daughter.