Gateway Pundit reports that one of the Muhammed cartoons that was faked by the Danish Imams has been identified. Dennis Nixon at Neander News reports that AP photographer Bob Edme posted this photo on August 15, 2005 in an MSNBC story about the Frenc.....

According to the editors of Jyllands-Posten, they were trying to make a point that Danish illustrators were afraid of signing drawing pictures of Mohammed for a children's biography of Mohammed. They enlisted twelve cartoonists to submit cartoons of Mohammed, which they then printed.

They were attempting to demonstrate that Danes (or illustrators) should not be afraid of doing so. Some of the pictures submitted were, to say the least, contentious; all of them challenged Muslim believes about the appropriateness of illustrating the Prophet.

Perhaps those Muslim's beliefs need to be challenged. I'd like to read a reasonable explanation of why a Dane's take on that matter is more "worthy" than a Muslim's take.

Had the paper run only illustrations -- pictures without the political slaps in the face -- probably nothing would have been made of it. But by crossing an already tricky line by politicizing Mohammed--e.g. bomb in the turban -- the paper went beyond making its point. It entered the realm of insult.

Maybe you're down with insulting religions. Personally, I find it tacky even though I follow no particular religion. I think it rather stupid, in fact, to goad believers for believing. That's why I find people like Richard Dawkins so tedious.

So, having goaded at least some Muslims, the paper found itself at the center of a storm. Perhaps they hoped to do that, but that's not what they claim.

Both sides of the issue have gone hyperbolic, turning a newspaper stunt into a matter of civilizational clashes. Of course there are stupid Muslims who are going to go all extreme. We know that after Newsweek if we didn't already.

We also know that newspapers cannot exist without some degree of free speech (not all countries deal from the same deck here, but you get the point). We in the West also believe -- with just as much fervor as Muslims -- that free speech is the sine qua non of democracy.

But Western zealots find this a convenient hammer with which to bash Islam, based on the over-reactions of some.

Of course I'm going to come down on the side of free speech: that's my culture. I was brought up in it and I use it daily. But you have to realize that as strongly as I feel the need to protect freedom of speech -- and I go much further than most Europeans -- I do not hold the monopoly on fervently held cultural beliefs. There are a lot of people who don't agree with my -- or likely, your -- stance.

They may be perfectly wrong. By my cultural lights, they are. But they also think that I'm wrong by their standards.

Since there's no authoritative book of truths out there, we both run a risk of being wrong. I'll stick by my arguments; they'll stick by theirs.

It is prudent, at the least, to realize what toes one is about to step on before treading heavily into other people's gardens. Jyllands-Posten didn't do that. And we all have this fine spectacle to watch. And yeah, rather tough for the six people who died for the idiocy.

What is worst is that people--for many different motives--have been able to spin this into exactly what the extremists want: a war between the West and Islam.

I'll agree that one can't live ones life based on how someone of ill purpose could spin what you say. But it is not pusilanimous to realize that that can happen and to factor that in to one's public statements. Any politician knows that.

Looks like you have caved in already.

I am concerned that telegraphing our fear of offending people whose beliefs are obviously diametrically opposed to what "we" (i.e., Western Civilization) value - or used to value - will only encourage them to flex and expand their capacity to intimidate.

I also am concerned that, in a free society that is nevertheless cowed by certain fanatics, public expression will be twisted and perverted. We will mock and ridicule a fading religious tradition that - at the very least - managed to coexist with science and democracy, while refraining from or curtailing criticism of a religious tradition that proudly proclaims its violent hostility towards principles we hold dear, or used to.

Whatever the risks of inflaming the crazies, the risks of caving to them are not insignificant.

Mohammed, sitting at a nearby table wondered what all the excitement was about. Always spoiling for a good Jihad, Mohammed glanced in the general direction of the table containing the offending danish, and rose from his table. "WHAT!!! Another disresp...

The rioting and demonstrations are an attempt to open a second front - one that exposes all of Europe to the kind of rioting seen in France for a month this past November....

From 'round the sphere this afternoon... Expose the Left notes more Dem moonbattery...now a Congressman is claiming Bush hasn't captured Bin Laden on purpose. (I think we've found Murtha's twin brother) Outside the Beltway updates on the violence o...

It seems to me that most everyone in the World has hurled mounds of sugar at the Muslim extremists to appease them in every way, But, The Muslim extremists will and only use Vinigar in response. You might address your comments to the Muslims, it would be more appropriate.

I will tell you about the Muslim stupidity, In Lebannon, they ransacked the Danish Embasy, throwing out computers and everything not tied down out the windows, They then set fires after that distruction. They set the fires as they went from floor to floor. Then they had to be rescued from the top floor because thay could not retreat down the floore they set fire to.

Mahammad didn't teach them very well, did he?

It may also lead to wanted reaction, but only after the violence has passed. That's sort of tough luck for the people who get killed in that violence. It's also tough luck for the stick-pokers and their friends, because those who react violently don't really spend much time on getting their targetting exactly right.

Is it worth it? Maybe. But I don't particularly want to be one who gets killed by a fanatic who can't aim properly, or who assumes that "All them Xs" are against us, when I'm an X.

I'm certainly not saying that the bad and intemperate aspects of various Muslims' conception of Islam shouldn't be pointed out. I am saying that one doesn't need to peg a rock at them everytime they do something stupid. Save it for the really egregious problems.

As the saying goes, sugar sometimes works better than vinegar...

If Muslims continue this behavior, then it's time for the civilized world to ship them out and let them practice their radicalism in their own lands behind a fence.

Of course there is, but still, many of us have bitterly complained about the American MSM's lack of courage to stand up for what in pretty much any other circumstance it would have vociferously defended: Its freedom of expression....

Yes, Western governments should not have tolerated the calls for violence against Jews and Christians promoted on Islamist websites. That takes tolerance too far in that it does not immediately call for a halt to violence.

But no matter the issue, throwing fuel on a fire -- and there certainly is a fire -- is generally not wise.

The cartoons were and are protected by rights of free speech, generally valued highly in the West. Even obnoxious and offensive speech is protected.

That the Muslim East does not place similar values on that right, preferring instead to value things like community and religion higher than individual rights, does not change the fact that freedom of speech is of paramount importance in the West, generally speaking.

But it doesn't take a clue-train to realize that insulting a religion is going to anger the followers of that religion, whether or not the anger reaches the level of violence.

While we tolerated "Piss Christ" and other unpleasantries, plenty of people (Christians of various stripes) were angry. They just didn't start burning buildings and demanding executions. Many did try to get the government involved, at least to the level of defunding whatever agencies may have provided any funding for the obnoxious art. I seem to recall that other, equally obnoxious art had been vanadalized by true believers, as well.

I think the Danish paper made a mistake -- though the right to make that mistake is protected. If they knew that there was something "iffy" about portraying Mohammed, and they did, then they might have made their point a little more tactfully. For example, plain illustrations -- without political import -- would have done it. So would have republication of historical images of the Prophet. Several of the cartoons were contentious, to say the least. (I do realize that other, more scabrous cartoons that were not part of the Danish paper's efforts may have been the proximate cause for the anger, but that doesn't really change my point.)

I believe that Salman Rushdie, as the editors of the Danish paper, knew exactly what they were doing: poking Muslims with a stick. Rushdie, raised a Muslim, certainly knew where the hot buttons were, but chose to push them anyway.

They had the right to do so. State Dept. said that. But State also said that it was pretty dumb to exercise that particular right in that particular way. Zeyno Baran is making that point.

If you know you're going to get a reaction -- possibly a violent, but certainly an intemperate reaction -- if you do something, you don't necessarily have to do that, even if you've the right to do it.

I think the editors of Jylland-Posten were careless in how they chose to make a point. I'm sure they did not intend deaths, destruction, and millions of dollars of damage to the Danish economy as a result of their editorial decision. Nor, I'm sure, did Newsweek anticipate deaths and riots to follow its editorial decision to publish a story about toilets and the Quran.

I think that Baran is suggesting that editors need to pick their fights, or at least the tactics they use in their fights, in a better way. There are those -- including UBL and some Muslim-bashers in the West -- who do want a civilizational battle. Aiding them, as both publications did, is not in our general interest.

So yes, there's a right to publish. But there is not an obligation to publish.

Note: This does not address the issue of provocation -- or prevarication -- by those who used the publication to ratchet up emotional anger. But it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to know that there are people out there who will do exactly that. While they should not have veto power, it must be realized that they do have some power. They will use that power when they think it serves their purposes. Here, it served the purpose of successfully driving a wedge between the Muslim world and the West.