Novelist Kamila Shamsie, writing from Karachi, Pakistan, about the Prophet Muhammad cartoons controversy, says there is a growing belief there that the cartoons were published (and re-published) as a deliberate provocation to Islamic countries.

Some excerpts from the Feb. 15 NYT commentary:

But to what extent do people away from the fringe buy into this notion of a conspiracy? At a coffee bar in Karachi with four of my female friends -- two schoolteachers, a lawyer and an interior designer -- I asked, "Were the cartoons meant to be provocative?"

"Yes!" The response was unanimous.

"So is there a conspiracy to provoke Muslims into reacting violently?"

Here, everyone's certainty diminished. "No, not a conspiracy," one of the schoolteachers said, and the others signaled agreement.

I couldn't quite work out if the distancing from the word "conspiracy" had to do with the whiff of paranoia that has attached to it since the term "conspiracy theorist" came into vogue. "What is the point of the provocation?" I pressed on.

"Who ever knows what's going on?" one of the schoolteachers said. "It's something internal going on in those places. Or something to do with their own politics about, who knows, Iran, Israel. It could be anything."

"It's not the publication in Denmark I find most objectionable," said the other schoolteacher. "It's the re-publication in France after all the riots that happened there. This is their way of telling the Muslims: 'You are second-class citizens. We don't care about your sensitivities.' "