Timothy Garton Ash had an excellent commentary in today's Globe and Mail on how the Muhammad cartoons controversy is between moderate Europe Muslims and their extremist minority.

Some excerpts (update: Actually, here's the entire piece in the Guardian):

For centuries, there was a rule for the co-existence of civilizations. It said: "When it Rome, doe as the Romans do." Globalization has undermined that rule. Because of mass migration, peoples and their cultures are physically mixed up together. Rome is no longer just Rome; it's also Tunis, Cairo and Tirana. ...

Because of worldwide mass media, there is no lunger such a thing as local offence or local intimidation. Everything can reach everyone. Competing cultures try to spread their nrms around the globe: George W. Bush for Western-style democracy, Pope Benedict XVI for Roman Catholicism, Omar Bakri Mohammed for sharia.

How should we live in this brave new world. How can we stay free in it? ... The least bad outcome will be a painful compromise between the universal right to free speech, the oxygen of all other freedoms, and the need for voluntary self-restraint in such a mixed-up world. ...

Of the violence that has been triggered, Ash said it was unjustified and criminal, but perhaps effective.

As to how to defuse it, Ash said the British media has done the right thing by letting Muslim extremists and moderate argue out the issues in a television studio.

Reporters sweepingly write of "Muslim anger" erupting across the world, but many British Muslims are as angry with the jihadist provocateurs as they are with the Danish cartoonists.

The temptation, to which too many are succumbing, is to see this as a showdown between Islam and Europe, or Islam and the West. But the real dividing line is between moderates and extremists on both sides, between men and women of reason and dialogue, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, and men and women of hatred and violence. Not for the first time in recent history, the means are more important than the ends. In fact, the means you choose determine where you'll end up.

We non-Muslim Europeans can contribute to that outcome by our policies abroad, toward Iraq, Iran, Israel and Palestine, and at home on immigration, education, jobs and so forth. We can also contribute by cultural sensitivity and self-restraint, but we cannot compromise on the essentials of a free society.

But there lies the rub, doesn't it?

When you have large-scale immigration (which I support; my mother was an immigrant) of quite disparate cultures, there is an opportunity for misunderstandings and more serious conflicts.

If you immigrate to a place, what are the responsibilities and duties of the country that takes you in, and what are yours as the immigrant?

As a NYT story published today notes, "the Muslim world has no tradition of, or tolerance for, religious irony in its art."

Muslim societies, by and large, don't seem to have an engrained tradition of free speech, particularly on religious matters. Some Islamic fundamentalists also argue democracy is incompatible with Islam.

What Garton doesn't mention (no one article, no matter how well crafted, can cover everything) is the strained relations between some parts of traditional Danish society and the Muslim newcomers.

Denmark has an article in its Criminal Code that provides for fines and/or jailing of someone convicted of attacking a "recognized religious community." However, read this excerpt from a Salon article:

The Danish right has only recently been converted to the free speech principle, and has its own idea of how to use it. In the past two years, the Danish People's Party has twice proposed to eliminate the blasphemy paragraph (from the Criminal Code). Two of the party's members, Jesper Langballe and Soren Krarup, both pastors in the Lutheran National Church, have described Muslims as "a cancer on Danish society" in speeches in parliament. They want to be free to say it outside parliament too. The paragraph was not removed in part because of opposition from Lutheran clergy, who do not all share the two pastors' views.

Frankly, that outdoes anything any right-wing politician has said here about Muslims or even immigrants in general (although the Reform Party did want to cap immigration at 150,000 annually when unemployment was over 10 per cent).

As an fyi, the governing party in Denmark is the Vestre Party, which means Liberal in English. However, it is described in the Salon article as being more centre-right. It has said the cartoons are a free speech issue, although the Salon article says a Danish man was jailed for 20 days in 2005 after a racist speech comparing Turks to rabbits.

Jytte Klausen, writing in Salon, said:

But is blasphemy what the cartoons are about? The problem with the cartoons isn't that they violate Islam's rules about depiction of the Prophet, according to Fatih Alev, a young Danish imam and a prominent advocate for integration with whom I've spoken many times on the issue of integration. Rather, it is their political content, he told the Danish press this week. He objects that the cartoons stereotype who Muslims are, and misrepresent the religion entirely as the propaganda program of militant Islamists. ...

In the past five years, I have interviewed 300 Muslim leaders in Western Europe about their views and solutions for the integration of Islam. It has long been evident to me that religious toleration and reverence for human rights have been sorely lacking in Denmark. ...

... Many religious leaders told me that in their view the central problem was a general lack of respect for religions. They reported that in day-to-day politics they found it easier to work with the local rabbis, pastors or priests than with the politicians.

I can't speak for Denmark, having not ever lived there, but generally speaking, we seem to be comfortable with secular government in Canada and the West in particular, while in Islamic societies, there is much more of a theocratic bent to politics.

However, we also seem to be more comfortable with accomodating our minorities. For example, no major newspaper in this country has reprinted the cartoons, although at least one student newspaper did.

Here's an excerpt from a Wednesday Globe and Mail story:

... The mainstream Muslim community in Canada has recognized the need to take what (Tarek Fatah of the Canadian Muslim Congress) calls "ownership of the word Muslim." It has become actively involved in Canadian political life and not marginalized as is the case in many Western countries.

"It's a shift, for Canadian Muslims, that has not happened anywhere else."

Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said violent demonstrations simply aren't a fit with the Canadian Muslim community -- which, because of Canada's immigration requirements, he said, is the most highly educated Muslim community in the world.

"They would find legal and peaceful means of protest far more productive," said the imam and professor at the University of Waterloo. "With demonstrations, you cannot have full control over who does what."

His organization, the largest Muslim umbrella group in Canada, has actively discouraged demonstrations over the cartoons and has spoken publicly against the violent protests -- as has the Muslim Canadian Congress.

Earle Waugh, a University of Alberta Islamic scholar, said most Muslim immigrants to Canada do not feel sidelined, a factor significantly fuelling the protests in European countries.

It would seem that when a given group feels that it is a part of a country's society, the risk of misunderstandings and conflict playing itself out violently or otherwise arcing out of control become considerably reduced.

But I still think a discussion about the bounds of free expression, including satire, between different cultures and religions needs to happen.

If you have some thoughts on the matter, please leave them below.