My pal Deb Jones pointed to this over at Canadian Journalist: A short commentary by Ibn Warraq on Der Speigel's website on why the West must defend the cartoonists' actions.

An excerpt:

Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

So, what did the Bush administration have to say about this, according to the NYT?

"We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive." ...

The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, reading the government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," which are routinely published in the Arab press, "as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."

Still, the United States defended the right of the Danish and French newspapers to publish the cartoons. "We vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view," Mr. McCormack added.

So they're on everyone's side in this! :)

And how about Arab reaction?

Streets in the Palestinian regions and in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia were filled with demonstrators calling for boycotts of European goods and burning the flag of Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared.

While a huge rally in the Gaza Strip was peaceful -- and many leaders warned against violence -- some of the oratory was not.

"We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," one preacher at Al Omari mosque in Gaza told worshipers during Friday Prayer, according to Reuters. Other demonstrators called for amputating the hands of the cartoonists who drew the pictures.

However, check this out:

In Gaza, a pamphlet released by gunmen at the European Union office threatened harm to "churches."

Hamas leaders, showing how their role has changed since their election success last week, quickly and publicly reacted to calm fears of Gaza's small Christian population, only 3,000 people. On Thursday a top Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, visited the only Catholic church in Gaza to condemn any threats against Christians.

"He said he is protecting us not because he is Hamas," said the Rev. Manuel Musallam of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, who said he has long and friendly relations with Hamas. "But he is protecting Christians and our institutions as the state of Palestine and as a government."

Still, a bit of a values clash here. I'm having trouble coming up with a cartoon topic that would make me call for someone's decapitation or limb amputation.

We have governments like Syria and Saudi Arabia voicing outrage over them; both those governments are near the bottom of any list of nations when it comes to respecting human rights, particularly freedom of expression.

As has been noted by others, in some Arab countries, viciously anti-Semitic cartoons are, shall we say, not unknown.

So what about reaction from Muslims in western countries?

Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress said in Friday's Globe and Mail of the cartoons, "there is no question they are meant to hurt the feelings of Muslims."

At the same time, he said of many Muslims: "Provoked, they walked blindfolded into a trap that had been set for them, and came out worse than what they started with."

Fatah also criticized the reactions of some Arab governments, given their dictatorial practices.

What would have been an interesting contribution by Fatah would be to say what would be fair grounds for western artists and writers to criticize about some views of Islam. Is any lampooning or satire of any aspect of Islam appropriate?

Brian Gable, the award-winning cartoonist of The Globe and Mail, wrote this in an online commentary published Friday:

Clashing is something editorial cartoonists actually do know something about. It's our bread and butter. Every day, our working environment includes clashing editorials, cartoons, columns and letters to the editor, all expressing strong opinions from a wide range of individuals, interest groups, political ideologies and cultures. It was this space for debate and the fundamental value of intellectual clashing that the editor of the Jyllands-Posten felt he was defending. What resulted is the current argument over the rights of a free press versus the rights of a religious believer not to be offended. ...

Freedom of the press and freedom of speech, by definition, include the freedom to offend. But the freedom to offend has to be used carefully if it is to retain real power. Religion A can mock religion B and vice versa forever, but headway is rarely made. From a satirist's perspective, it's almost always more profitable to observe and comment on the actions of the speakers themselves. If you're proposing death and destruction in the name of your specific deity, then we'll have a problem.

As a cartoonist, I understand and support the editor of the Jyllands-Posten and his action in promoting the fundamental importance of free speech. Democracy has always been a messy business and mistakes in judgment are a constant risk. If there was any error in judgment, perhaps it lies in the fact that the artists were asked to comment on the validity of a specific religion's taboos. Under the rules of a free press, it's fair game - but to what end?

Here is some of an Spiegel Online interview with al-Jazeera cartoonist Shujaat Ali:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: As a cartoonist working for Al-Jazeera, how did you respond when you first saw the Danish caricatures of Muhammad?

Shujaat Ali: It is the responsibility of journalists to be ethical. Religion is a very sensitive issue, and I think no truly professional cartoonist in the world would ever try to pick on a religion like this. There's an informal code of ethics among cartoonists in the media, and it includes two kinds of censorship: one is self-censorship; the other is professional censorship. Religion is one of the very important things that we should respect and not criticize. I grew up reading the cartoons of Herbert Herblock and they really impressed me. There are many cartoonists, in the US and Europe, who are really very professional. They would never treat a religion like this. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You speak of "censorship" as if it's a good thing -- as a kind of act of self-discipline.

Shujaat Ali: Yes, yes, yes. It is a journalist's responsibility to follow this code of ethics -- it's very important. ...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Many critics here in the West point out the hypocrisy in the current protests from the Arab World. Arabs are now complaining about negative stereotyping of Islam. But Jewish groups here accurately complain about anti-Semitic portrayals of their religion in caricatures that often appear in Arab newspapers. A lot of cartoonists in the Arab world are clearly anti-Semitic.

Shujaat Ali: I would agree about that, and I feel sorry about it. We should respect people from other religions, whether they are Jews, Christians or whatever. We should have a code of ethics among cartoonists, and we need to ask ourselves how far it is acceptable for us to go and what kind of limits we should set. It's fine for cartoonists to target politicians or governments, but they should leave religion alone. Cartoonists really need to be respectful in this regard.

I found this commentary by Washington Post writer Philip Kennicott useful:

Gravity helps those who push people to conflict; moderation is a Sisyphean task that must always work uphill. Americans can do very little, and are in fact obliged to do nothing, about Muslim societies that don't respect the Western values of tolerance and freedom. They are obliged only to sustain religious tolerance in their own. Moderation, in this case, doesn't mean compromising on the defense of basic freedoms; it means demonstrating the exuberant value of freedom in a secular society. We need more blasphemy, exactly the sort of blasphemy that most challenges our own religious sensitivities. It needn't come in the form of tasteless cartoons but in the return of voices like those of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, voices that puncture the pretensions and sanctity of our own religious beliefs and leaders. We may cluck about the lack of freedom in Iran, but we have grown very orthodox about the way we speak of religion in our own public square. The curious thing about sacrilege is that it very often strengthens true religion as much as it reaffirms the right to challenge it.

That is one of the few truths that we might usefully try to communicate to fundamentalists in all corners of the world. But this grew so fast, and so quickly, and without the incorporation of moderating voices on either side, that we've truly reached a frightening impasse. Listen to an Egyptian member of parliament, quoted in Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly, get it exactly wrong: "The Danish government needs to make a more formal apology in acknowledgment that freedom of expression does not mean people are free to insult prophets."

So perhaps these cartoons really do crystallize why Islam and the West are incompatible and must hunker down for a "long war." The only other option, it seems, is to remember that if vastly different worldviews can find no accommodation on a subject, then perhaps it's too early, in human history, to have the conversation.

I saw the cartoons (with French captions; my French is minimal), and I can't say I was wildly impressed by them. But at the same time, any calls for death or delimbing of the cartoonists or destruction of the newspaper offices are wildly inappropriate and disproportionate punishements, to say the least. I should also say the cartoons said more about the cartoonists than they did about Islam or the prophet Muhammad.

This BBC piece also suggests some in the Muslim world are trying to use this silly incident to their own propaganda advantage:

The row over the Danish cartoons would probably have remained a local dispute between some Muslims and a Danish newspaper had it not been for three factors:

• the rise of violent political Islam
• America's war on terror
• modern transnational media.

America's war on terror is still largely perceived in the Arab world as a war on Islam - a perception reinforced by the fact that it is happening exclusively in Muslim countries, namely Iraq and Afghanistan.

Issues such as the Iraq war are seen as catalysts in the row

Parts of the Arab media describes it as a modern crusade. Many Arab columnists often speak of a campaign to distort and discredit Islam.

For them, the row over the Danish cartoons is yet another confirmation of this perception.

But long before the 11 September attacks and America's war on al-Qaeda, Islamists were aggressively promoting their world view and attacking liberal secular values, not only in the West but across the Arab and Muslim world as well. ...

The internet and satellite broadcasting are being diligently used by Islamist activists across the world to drum up support for the doctrine of a universal Muslim nation up against an aggressive and imperialist West.

A local Danish dispute is thus quickly elevated to the level of a global conflict.

The appropriate action, from my perspective, would be for Muslims to chill out and for cartoonists in the future to follow Gable's wise advise about using their power to offend wisely.

But at the same time, the freedom to offend is a crucial part of keeping democracies vital -- as is the freedom for offended party to call the offensive to account through battle in the court of public opinion.