Why does it seem like everyone is missing the story? It isn't about the cartoons anymore, nor is it about anti-Semitic and/or anti-Christian bias in the Muslim world.
The story should be about how Muslims around the world are being whipped into a riotous frenzy by people using these cartoons as a political tool. Every media outlet that publishes them -- even though the intent of publishing them is to give readers/viewers a complete report and context -- becomes a tool in this political manipulation. Ultimately, the US is in a lose-lose situation: Our media will have to publish them lest we look like we're selling out or love of free speech. But are we ready for Muslims to riot in the streets of America if it comes to that?
 

Owwww - I sense a hidden hand.  2 questions.

Isn't it offensive to Muslims to suggest they can be "whipped into a frenzy" by someone else?  Do you think of them as animals ready to strike when red is waved in front of them?

Who pray tell is behind this?  The Illuminatti? CFR? John Birch Society? Alan Greenspan?  Please do tell.

Take a deep breath, Puck, don't strain your back carrying all that sarcasm. And don't look for something in my post that you're not going to find -- I'm not blaming anything on Bush. Sorry to disappoint you.

Any group of people can be whipped into a frenzy by an number of religious, political or sociologial circumstances. Muslims are not special in that regard. The radicals among them are using the cartoons as a touchstone for anti-Western feeling. I'm not interested in debating rightness or wrongness of the anti-Western/anti-American feeling that exists in MANY parts of the Muslim world. It exists, that's enough.

Look at the map and see how the protests and riots have spread over the last few weeks.
OK, sure, it's easier to think about it as "all this over a bunch of CARTOONS?" But does anyone actually believe it's JUST about cartoons that at this point?

What the hell is going on at the Inquirer, Dan? Where's Thomas Paine when ya need him? 

No offense to Anne and Amanda but why instigate these people? Hello? They're blankin' fanatics! Why don't they just put Joe Natoli outside in the trunks w/carny watercage/bullseye. All proceeds to Hamas.

I mean it's like say you're walking downtown and you see this dark alley with 5 guys at the end that look like they have knives, guns, chains. Would ya walk down that alley???

Boy-o-boy do you miss the point SM.  I'm on their side.  You can blame whatever you want on Bush - he's the one whose pro-Israel hypocrisy caused this problem in the first place.

Of course it's not just about cartoons, its about giving offense - an offense you'd understand if it were one of your scared icons - the Holocaust for example as Daniel points out.

My point is that not only can't understand it; you can't even understand why you can't understand it.

The first problem is understandable - they don't have a Western worldview and you do.  The second - is just the ugly American peeking out from the psyche of a liberal who thinks we could all just get along if everyone would be enlightened and think like me.

Such things as progress, truth, Right and Wrong are the illusions of our time. Go ahead and believe what you wish - I would appreciate it however if you people would stop causing riots with your arrognace - they endanger my children's future.  That's one truth I do believe in.
 

Barry - here's another view on the cartoons, from a veteran newspaper editor, who argues for publishing for educational purposes:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=71&aid=96404

2 headlines from this moments Drudge Report - 

"Holocaust Cartoon Contest in Iran"
"Israel: Iran is the most serious threat since WW2"

So now we are going to war over "holcaust denial."  But hey - we're not like those Muslim fanatics rioting over things that cause them offense - are we?

Dan,

Thanks for the insight big guy. Brought me back to my days of ethics classes at the School of Journalism. "We Are..."

The one factor that seems to be beyond our comprehension and we continually fail to realize (especially the administration) is that these people are uniquely different from our way of thinking and no matter how hard we feel we're doing the right and just thing we can't begin to impose our morals or values on their way/view of life. 

It's a losing proposition, at least for the short term. Now if we're willing to make sacrifices for the next couple hundred years or so, maybe there's a chance, albeit slim.

Editorially speaking in this day and age of uncertainty we have to use critical judgements to know when to strike and when to pull back the reins. Let's not stir up undue trouble for the paper, town, troops. Let sleeping dogs in America lie, quote me on that.

As a liberal slowly coming to my senses I had feelings of guilt and dread over thinking that maybe, just maybe, the Muslim world is incompatible with our world. 

I am married to a Muslim woman and she loathes most Muslim men and feels ill-at-ease in Muslim countries. She feels more comfortable around my Jewish/Israeli friends who accept her without fail.

The majority of the world's Muslims are terribly educated which leads to mass ignorance. Now, as Westerners, we can just disconnect ourselves from them which means no more oil and other resources from their lands. OR - we can try to introduce them to concepts which we are still getting used to, such as:

*civil rights
*womens' rights
*free press
*free speech

Here's the deal --- if I move to Saudi Arabia I need to live by their rules. They have an established society and I made a choice to move there so when in Rome....

Now, if they move to the USA or Denmark, for example, they have to live by the rules of the host country. No ifs, ands, or buts. If the host country has a FREE (and hopefully responsible) PRESS, it can pretty much publish what it wants - within reason.

If the newspaper was calling for the mass extermination of Muslims, well -- I'd say that was a call for concern. But you HAVE TO GET OVER the caricatures. All faiths are lampooned. God isn't that important in a free and open and technologically advanced nation. 

If you can't deal with that --- LEAVE. At the risk of sounding like one of those dumb "love it or leave it" Americans, I don't know what else to say.

As a Jew I don't care if Iran publishes Holocaust cartoons. It doesn't affect me. As a Muslim living in Iran, how could cartoons in Denmark affect them?

And if The Inquirer began lampooning the Holocaust, I'd simply stop supporting it --- but I wouldn't burn an American Flag and burn down the building.

If you think I have no room to speak, check out what the INTELLIGENT & RATIONAL Muslims (who live in Egypt) have to say:   http://bigpharaoh.blogspot.com/

Stop infantilizing these people. There are brave souls in their midst who strive for what we have --- let's lift them up a bit instead of patting them on the head and saying, "you're right, we're sorry" all the time!!!!

I guess the publication standards are different when the people you are upsetting can kill you. Journalists are only brave when they are offending people who won't kill them. Then it is "an important statement."

The big question everyone is missing: can they live in a world peaceably without sharia being instituted on others?

"Journalists are only brave when they are offending people who won't kill them"

tell that to a bunch of people I know who have spent months reporting from places where their very presence is dangerous.

> Now, if they move to the USA or Denmark, for example, they have to live by the rules of the host country. No ifs, ands, or buts. 

All my life I've been saying that.  And all my life people like you have been calling me racist for saying it.

Ok, I know this doesn't apply to the Inquirer, but what would then explain the behavior of the media?

Incredibly quick to show pictures of the crucifix in urine.

If not fear, what?

Read the following from Mark Steyn's last column: Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.

Strange enough that Muslim extremists in Kosovo kill priests and monks, burn churches over 400 years old, gouge the eyes out of every icon of Christ...all under the watchful eyes of the UN.  Clinton even did their dirty work with his US/UN bombing.  No real American press coverage, no outrage by US christians... acceptable?  understandable?  maybe if the churches were American Protestant churches?

I seem to remember the Serb paramilitary forces being on the destructive side as well in that conflict.

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...