So back in September, a Danish newspaper printed about a dozen caricatures it had solicited depicting the prophet Muhammad (which can be viewed in thumbnail form here). In the past couple of weeks, this has caused protests and riots in parts of the Muslim world. I'm sure you all know this, and I only mention it as background.

Let's talk about Denmark.

The Fogh-Rasmussen Venstre party, which is in control of the Danish government, is a fairly right-wing party. There is another party to the right of them, the Danske Folkeparti, a rightist populist party, which is an important bloc for the Venstre party to court. These right-wing parties, along with the media outlets which act as their mouthpieces, have been using the Danish Muslims as a wedge issue. Muslims are responsible for a proportionately larger percentage of crimes in Denmark, and they are also generally lower on the income ladder, not visible in positions of power, targets for discrimination, accused of "not assimilating well"... you get the idea. They are to Danish conservatives what Mexicans are to American conservatives.

Officially, the cartoons were printed in the context of a story about self-censorship, and how hard it was to find an illustrator for a children's book about Muhammad, since portrayals of human beings in art are forbidden by Islamic law, and this goes double for stuff like god and the Prophet. However, the Jyllandsposten, which published the cartoons, is a conservative paper. Not like our Washington Times or New York Post, but maybe like our CNN or something. This is worth mentioning because it's altogether possible that the editorial staff picked out some of the more insulting cartoons intentionally, in a deliberate Muslim-baiting attempt.

Outside of Denmark, this received only minor attention until, in mid-January, some Scandinavian and Belgian papers reprinted the cartoons. On January 24, Saudi Arabia publicly condemned the cartoons, and things went downhill from there as can be seen in this timeline. There were eventually riots over the cartoons. People died. Of course this is unnacceptable behaviour. But in an effort to understand it, some points.

The cartoons are not satire
I don't know if this point is being floated too much anymore, but the "those uncouth Muslims just can't take a joke" argument is worth refuting. Satire is something directed culturally inward; it's laughing at yourself, one way or another. Making fun of something outside of your culture is just being xenophobic, basically. This is why I never liked those "Most Extreme Elimination Championships" or whatever they're called, on Spike TV (they're Japanese quasi-game_shows re-dubbed with American announcers making fun of them). They just seem cruel and xenophobic, whereas a show of a similar sort parodying, say, Survivor, or America's Idol or whatever would be legitimate satire. Since these cartoons come from non-Muslim pens, the provoke a much different reaction than cartoons drawn by Muslims would have.

The cartoons can be seen as racist, imperialist, or classist
Like I said, in Denmark, as in most of Europe, Muslims tend to stay near the bottom of the income ladder and are discriminated against and so forth (the recentish riots in Paris sprung much from the same situation). Moreover, the Middle East has often been the target for imperialism by the West, including the current occupation of Iraq by Anglo-American forces and what many consider to be the occupation of Palestine by Israeli forces. And the cartoons deliberately conflate the ideas of "Muslim" and "Arabian jihadi", which is a racist image sustained mainly by right-wingers in Europe and America. There's some question as to whether or not this is actually much of a contributing factor in the riots, since there have been fierce riots in Indonesia, where the class issues experienced by Middle-Eastern and North African Muslims in Europe are not applicable, Arabs are not prevalents, and no country in the region has suffered from real imperialism since the Vietnam era.

However, most of the Muslim world (Indonesia included), is poorer and has less influence on global culture and politics than the West does. It is, though obviously protected speech, at best tasteless to poke fun at your less-well-off neighbours (royal families and oil tycoons exempted, natch), who are less well off at least partially because of things you have done to them or are currently doing to them. That is the widest way possible, I think, to interpret the cartoons. The privileged (or, in the case of America, England, and Israel, the oppressors) making fun of the underprivileged (or, in the case of Iraq and Palestine, the oppressed).

Most Muslims do not feel that rioting is the best way to deal with this
Most Muslims are very likely a little bit peeved, but it is not a big deal to them. Even moderate Islamists, who are pro-protest, are calling for peace, not violence. The early riots in Egypt and Syria were likely stirred up by the secularist governments trying to build some Islamist street cred, since Islamism is a very powerful political movement at this point in time. At least one of the other riots, in Beirut, was initially a peaceful protest which got out of hand, despite calls for calm from its organisers. These riots are, as usual, work of extremist groups, not of mainstream Islam or even conservative Islamists.

This is not, at its heart, a free-speech debate or a 'clash of civilisations'
This is a clash of Something and Something Else, with the role of Something being played by Religious Extremism and Something Else being played by Being Kind of a Dick. Or, if you prefer, Something is Reactionary Nativism, with Something Else being Cultural Insensitivity. Islamism can be seen, historically, as reactionary nativism. In came to prominence only after the Great Game had been played out by Western players on the Near- and Central Asian board (and you can see this happening in super-fast motion in Iraq, with both the phenomena of Islamist anti-American groups and Islamist anti-unification groups). Put another way, religion is more central to the culture of countries which are primarily Muslim not as a naturally occurring state of affairs, but rather as a reaction to the suppression of their own culture (and self-rule) by external forces.

This can been seen, generically, as a Clash of Extremisms, or at least a Clash of Radicalisms. You have the right-wing paper in Denmark appealing to its readers' ethnic fear and hatred of Muslims, tarring them with a very wide brush, against the most radical of said Muslims. Or, if you prefer the wide view, you have the Haves sniggering up their sleeves at their Have-Not brethren, the most desperate of whom find nothing amusing in their situation.

Things would not, ceteris paribus, be much different if our roles were truly reversed.
Yes, Muslim papers print anti-Jewish cartoons all the time. All papers print anti-American cartoons all the time. This is not a true role reversal. Neither secular Western doctrine (capitalism, whatever you want to call it), nor Christianity nor Judaism forbid depiction of their most holy (or dearly-held) figures. Muslims demographically (or the geographic areas they mostly inhabit) are not better off that the West, partially at the expense of the West. England is not under occupation by Jordan, nor is Israel under occupation by Palestine. I think if our roles were truly reversed, and a Muslim country published cartoons of a redneck shotgun Jesus, more people than just James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and their respective orcish hordes would have conniptions.

That said, a summation.

The people doing the rioting are by and large religious extremists, and we know how those people are. It's retarded to riot about something as petty as this, but then again religious extremists, of any ilk, are not renowned for their critical thinking abilities, unless it is for their total absence thereof.

Publishing some of the cartoons (the more offensive ones, particularly takbeer-bomb-head Muhammad) was improper, insensitive, and basically racist. I think the people who are upset by the cartoons have a legitimate gripe at least about the cultural issues that they bring up. I don't think they qualify as hate speech, though. Not by a long shot. They are therefore protected.

I think, apart from just calling for peace, we should make a serious attempt to engage the Muslim world on some meaningful level. There is so much discontent simmering just below the surface that even a trivial thing like newspaper cartoons can bring it to a boil in places all over the world, and we have both a genuine interest and a serious need in addressing that. Of course we're not going to institute sharia in Western countries, but the majority of the population in countries like America, France, and Denmark doesn't even know or care what this particular quarter of the world wants or has to say. It's a cultural myopia that we should address sooner rather than later.