Good article Graham,

As an average Muslim although I found the cartoons rude, I was shocked how easy for Islamists to manipulate the masses.

Even the boycott is debatable, Denmark have always been on good trade, business and cultural terms with the Muslim world. Definitely every country will have few perverts who would like to stir the naives.

Boaz and Kaktuz,

You keep talking about your distroted version of the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH).

Here is how we see him:

" No Arab has superiority over a non-Arab, and no non-Arab has superiority over an Arab. No white person has superiority over a black person, and no black person has superiority over a white person. No man has superiority over a woman, and no woman has superiority over a man. The criteria for acceptance in the sight of God are righteousness and honest living." Quran, and Prophet Muhammad's Farewell Sermon.

Nothing in our Holybook comes close to Liviticus

Onya Graham indeed.

You wrote this article across broad parametres - mentioned Hanson - intolerance - forms of media - repercussions on the press of freedom of speech.

But the old alignments of OLO commenters are developing.

No surprises – little learned.

The Mosqueteers are in their comfort zone of discrediting Islam and the latest Muslim "outrage". The Bible will be cited to prove Christianity's "tolerance".

The Koran and other Muslim writings will be cited to prove "intolerance".

The degree that "normal" people actually adhere to religious tracts in their actual lives will be disregarded.

Generalisations boosting prejudice rule.

No surprises.

OLO's Muslim minority pushed and frustrated to a hardening defence will get a bit shirty also.

Then the Rightwingers will arrive to score a few points for their cause.

No surprises

The Left will appear too dogmatic and wet to get much of a lookin.

Us "godly" centrists will, of course, be above the fray.

Anyway, its excellent to generate comments and hits. Obviously anything to do with Islam is what the "heartland" of OLO wants to read.

The relevance is also there. New crises in the Middle East appear to create problems for Westerners every day. Those Australians of Middle East origin (who happen to be Muslim) are also frequently in the papers.

It’s a shame though that very few in OLO tackle the socio-political and economic reasons why the Islamic world is in such turmoil.

IF OLO COMMENTERS DIDN’T PUSH RELIGIOUS EXPLANATIONS TO THE FORE ALL THE TIME THIS WOULD OPEN UP THE DEBATE RATHER THAN RESTRICT IT.

For balance - one could argue that many more Muslims have been killed by Western Christians in the last 10 years than the other way around...

A death is a death. But less of a problem in somebody else's land...

Your comment "None of us might change our minds, but we might change our dispositions and recognise our intellectual foes as being at least worthy of respect." is quite apt.

I fail that test occasionally, but, for too many OLO posters on Islam its a self righteous habit.

Pete

So let me get this straight.

To a Muslim all visual representations of Mohammed are forbidden.

Therefore, by virtue of the above, no Muslim should have any idea what Mohammed looks like.

White, black, brown, male, female, turban, crown or bald with a handlebar mustache.

Similarly, they could not possibly even have a mental picture of what he should look like.

So please explain how a stereotypical representation of an Arab (turban, beard, thobe) has been seen as representive of Mohammed, when in effect the Muslim cannot be sure it is indeed his likeness that is being portrayed?

This misconception has led to violence, vandalism and even death by those who believe these Danish cartoons have offended Islam.

If I tell a Muslim that the cartoon I have drawn of Bugs Bunny dressed up as Ali Baba is my interpretation of the Prophet Mohammed have I offended them?

Can they refute my picture?

It appears that Christians are offending Muslims via drawings of people they have told Muslims represents Mohammed.

This would be laughable if it weren't true.

Without the burden of proof of Mohammed's true likeness, some extreme sections of the Muslim community have used this as an exercise to foment anti-Christian sentiment and is a chilling portent of worse to come.

Good stuff, worth a second read

Dear Graham

Thank your for an excellent article. Very thoughtful reading.

Borofkin, I concur with your comments.

Cheers
Kay

Jay, one of the so-far unexplored angles here is that there are plenty of images of Mohammed, many for sale in Islamic countries. A search of "Mohammed" on Google Images yields 76,400 results. Even if 80% of them are of a Mohammed other than the prophet (ratio calculated from the first page of the search results), that's a lot of images that haven't lead to riots anywhere in the world so far this year! The link is http://images.google.com.au/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-33,GGLG:en&q=mohammed.

As Irfan points out, there are elements of confection in the whole affair. It's not a straight religious issue, although it couldn't exist without the religious justification.