Maybe the people who want to turn this around into a backhanded assault on Jew and make this into an antisemitic diatribe are right. And by that I mean maybe we should burn down the Syrian embassy in London and turn over police cars in Paris. Maybe we Jews should start to beat people down in the street for the crime of offending us. Maybe it's really time for that. What are they going to do? Tell us they hate us? Maybe the dumbest thing of all is for us to claim we're not offended and how evolved we are, unlike them. I say if thine eye offends ME I pluck it the fuck out. It's time for Jewhad!

'"Not funny, is it?" says Hottel. "I was deeply offended just to hear it cast as an example. Well, that's roughly the effect on Muslims of these cartoons. And can you imagine if the situation were reversed, if this had been someone outside the religion making jokes about Judaism? You better bet there would have been the same reaction."'

Um, no. If a left-wing pseudo-secular newspaper made an off-color joke about Jesus, I can see no scenario where you'd have a bunch of Pentecostals (not sure which Christian sub-set most closely approximates radical Islamists, but let just assume that we're talking about some serious "Red State, Right Wing, Evangelicals") lining up outside to burn the place down and calling for the beheadings of the editorial staff.

Same thing for a group of Lubavich Hasidm reacting to an article openly denying the Holocaust. Just not going to happen.

Sorry, but the people rioting in the streets are typifying exactly the behavior that the cartoon depicts. The problem is that "Western" people don't have anything like the same world-view as radical Islamists do.. it isn't "apples and oranges", it is "apples and hockey sticks".

Muslim convert Nancy Hottel claims that if "the situation were reversed, if this had been someone outside the religion making jokes about Judaism? You better bet there would have been the same reaction."

Really? Would Jews be out in the street, burning buildings and calling for the extermination of those who had offended Judaism? I seriously doubt it. Can Ms. Hottel back that up with any examples of Jews going on rampages when thier sensibilities are offended by non-Jews? Maybe a sternly-worded letter from ADL, but killings and burnings?

I share my room with a Europpean young woman(I am Moroccan) . We were talking about the cartoons. She asked me many questions about Islam. One of them was :what's the most serious?, insulting Mohammed or insulting the king?. If she knew about how many coup d'état has been in the era of the former king Hassan II. She would not ask this question.Unfortunetly, She would go back to Europe and have the conviction that she knows Moroccans and Morocco. Insulting the prophete is not my point. She is a bright student, smart, and open minded but is she really interested in our culture?. Foreigners come here and bring with them rigid ideas about Islam, as I can see with this article, It mentioned 'les années de plomb' but not the reconciliation that occured between Moroccans and the government lately. The will to change and to be open to the others. This comment doesn't mean answering to the issue of the cartoons itself, it is responding to the reactions and definitly we need to open a discussion.

I've been reading the comments on most of the articles about the cartoons and the reactions in the Middle East. Around half complain about something not being covered in the articles that was covered or posts complaining based on what they seem to think would be in them had they bothered to read them. It strikes a very strange tone so see someone complaining that Salon said X when that didn't happen at all. Try reading, I hear it is fundamental.

What struck me about the article was the analogy of the Government as a father, and the press as a bad little boy that ruins the neighbourhood. Personally, I believe in the liberal ideal, that it should be the other way around - the government is the bad little boy who ruins the neighbourhood and its up to the press to watch and call them them on it. This is a fundamentally different viewpoint and I suspect it is the main reason for all the misunderstanding, offence and violence. It seems that many Muslims simply cannot understand WHY the governments of the West can't stop or punish the media involved, and simply cannot accept that governments would not be behind it in some way. The notion of a free press and a more open market of ideas and opinions (not wholly free or open I grant you) that western democracies enjoy is still a strange idea to them.

The headline also bothered me; "No to violence, no to Western disrespect"... It still seems to be the policy of Salon to conflate the printing of the cartoons and the violent reaction as somehow being morally equivalent. Like the brilliant (and brilliantly infuriating) Independent writer, Robert Fisk, the run of articles that Salon has published on this is squarely on the side of this sort of cultural relativist hogwash. For a magazine which has published eloquent defences of freedom of the press and freedom of speech on issues in its own country (as well as much material which could be described as harsh and offensive to Rublicans, Scientologists and Fundamentalist Christians) I would have expected a more balanced outlook.

1. Jerry Falwell dies and goes to heaven. As he is walking along the heavenly pavement, a long-haired man in a convertible almost runs him over. Three naked blondes are in the car, and the man is snorting cocaine. Jerry is offended and asks St. Peter why that hippie creep hasn't been sent to Hell. St. Peter replies, "Oh, we can't do anything about him. That's J.C. His dad owns the place."

2. Jesus and St. Peter are playing golf. The 18th hole is a long par three surrounded by a water hazard. St. Peter tells Jesus that the green is too far away and that he should hit short and chip onto the green. Jesus says "No. I saw Tiger Woods make this shot on tv." So Jesus hits six balls in succession into the water hazard. Finally Jesus gives up and says, "I quit. I'm going to get my balls and go home." As Jesus is walking on the water, retrieving his balls, the next foursome approaches the 18th tee. One of the golfers asks St. Peter, "Who does that guy think he is, Jesus Christ?" St. Peter says, "No, worse than that. He thinks he's Tiger Woods."

The nice thing about living in the US is that we can make those jokes and not even Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson will burn our houses down or ask young, muscular Christians to kill us.