Irfan you raised a good point: since the cartoons were first published last year, overwhelming majority of Muslims chose peaceful protest in capital cities (like London) or Danish products boycott.

The recently orchestrated violence were condemned by all Muslims.

Speaking of freedom fo speech and in the very same week, the BBC website reported a 3 years prison for a historian for denying the holocaust in a book

- The despots who rule from Tehran to Tripoli are past masters at using external distractions to deflect attention from domestic oppression and misery.

Yeah. We'd never stand for that in the west.

"The economy's going down the toilet, Mr Rumsfeld!"

"Quick! We need a war! Let's say, oh, Iraq. Saddam must still have those WMD I personally sold to him in the eighties. Oh, and send a memo to George: Hussein said Christ was an idiot. That'll get us permanent support from the oval office".

Anti-Semitic quotes from the Prophet Muhammad’s Qur'an, and his Hadith:

The resurrection of the dead will not come until the Muslims will war with the Jews and the Muslims will kill them

The trees and rocks will say, "O Muslim, O Abdullah, here is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

Ignominy shall be their [the Jews'] portion wheresoever they are found...

And thou wilt find them [the Jews] the greediest of mankind....

Evil is that for which they sell their souls... For disbelievers is a terrible doom.

Taste ye [Jews] the punishment of burning.

Those who disbelieve Our [Allah'] revelations, We shall expose them to the fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment.

Because of the wrongdoing of the Jews.... We [Allah] have prepared for those of them who disbelieve a painful doom.

Allah hath cursed them [the Jews] for their disbelief

They [the Jews] will spare no pains to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is clear from what they say, but more violent is the hatred which their breasts conceal.

In truth the disbelievers are an open enemy to you.

And thou seest [Jews and Christians] vying one with another in sin and transgression and their devouring of illicit gain.... evil is their handiwork.

O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends.

The most vehement of mankind in hostility [are] the Jews and the idolaters.

Fight against such of those [Jews and Christians] ... until they pay for the tribute readily, being brought low

Allah fighteth against them [the Jews]. How perverse they are!

Believers [muslims], …Proclaim a woeful punishment to those [rabbis and monks] that hoard up gold and silver and do not spend it in Allah's cause.... their treasures shall be heated in the fire of Hell....

They [the Jews] spread evil in the land....

[The Jews] knowingly perverted [the word of Allah]…

Irfan,I just read the same article that you did and came away with considerably different feelings about what I had just read.

I thought the central motif was not an attack on all muslims, nor a portrayal that they are all freedom haters or all anti-west.

I thought the article concisely pointed out that the cartoons were published quite some time before the violence, and that the vast majority of muslims didn't react to them at all, or barely at all.

I thought the article then went on to argue that the violence instead stemmed from the concerted hate campaign of a small group of powerful people with vested interests, and was not representative of any sort of wider muslim community.

In all of these thoughts I acknowledge that I may be mistaken, but I certainly left with the impression that the article was anti certain aspects of muslim leadership but not anti muslim.

It just goes to show that the Muslim faith is underpinned by the clerics and mullahs - the power players who play the emotions of the Muslim people. Free the Muslims to being free to practice their faith as they see it, then any perceived "offense" would not justify the clearly orchestrated destruction of property and lives.

In many respect Islam is superior to christianity as it showed when Europe was in the dark ages oppressed by the power players in Rome. Today, left behind the Western world, the mosques play on ignorance and use selections of the Koran to create a role for themselves.

Religion should free people, not enslave them like 7 centuries ago in Europe. (It's interesting how Mohammad lived 7 centuries after Christ suggesting this is the Muslim's dark ages waiting for a 'Martin Luther' to free them of their 'Rome').

Currently, even people like Irfan, talk of "offense". Is Allah so impotent that he cant take care of those offending infidels in Denmark without relying on the hordes on earth?

Alpal, that's also what i got from the article.
It goes to show that there are people in this world, Muslim, Christian, Atheist and Other, that like to stir up trouble and cause conflict, mayhem and destruction amongst people.
The problem is that people allow themselves to be stirred up and enraged making it easy for instigators to light fires.
The reaction to the cartoons is beyond the ridiculous now.