posted February 14, 2006 10:34 AM              

WHEN, last September, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, it knew it was testing the limits of free speech and good taste. But it could never have imagined how much. For Denmark itself, this has been the biggest crisis since the Nazi occupation during the second world war. But the implications for the already vexed relations between the West and Islam go far wider. Denmark's prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, summed it up: “We are today facing a global crisis that has the potential to escalate beyond the control of governments.”

At least ten people have died so far in protests against the cartoons. Several were killed in Afghanistan as police shot into a crowd besieging a Norwegian peacekeepers' base. More were shot dead as they tried to storm an American military base in the south of the country, setting cars alight and hurling rocks. The protests continued on Friday in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Kenya and several other countries. In Malaysia a massive demonstration erupted as a conference on relations between the West and Islam got under way. Speaking at the meeting, Malaysia's prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, talked of a “huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam.”

Western embassies in Syria, Lebanon, Indonesia and Iran have been attacked. Mosque sermons from Senegal to Sumatra have blasted the insult to the faith. Demonstrators in Karachi burned an effigy of the Danish prime minister. In Khartoum, some enraged marchers among a crowd of 50,000 chanted “Strike, strike, bin Laden.” Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya and Iran have all withdrawn their ambassadors from Denmark. Iran has formally banned imports from Denmark, while consumer boycotts across the Middle East have emptied supermarket shelves of all Danish products.

Western governments have reacted with shock and muddle. There is a growing feeling in continental Europe that Britain and America should have taken a principled stand on grounds of free speech, but have failed. In France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority—roughly 10% of the population—there has been surprise at the relatively conciliatory response of Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, who called the publication of the cartoons “insensitive” and “unnecessary”. Many in France are baffled at the reluctance of the British and American press to publish the cartoons themselves. (On February 8th, three editors and a reporter quit the New York Press over a decision not to reprint the cartoons, and President George Bush called on world governments to stop the violence and be “respectful”.)

To be sure, the official French reaction has been measured. President Jacques Chirac declared that freedom of expression was “one of the foundations of the republic” but added a plea for “respect and moderation” in its application. And one editor at France-Soir, a small newspaper that was the first to claim the “right to caricature God”, was sacked after publishing all 12 caricatures. Yet it seemed that the paper's owner, a Franco-Egyptian, had been seeking an excuse to get rid of him anyway. The rest of the press, along with those who see the matter as a test case of the ability of French democracy to withstand the demands of political Islam, have taken an increasingly muscular position.

Several big national papers, including Le Monde and Libération, have republished some of the cartoons to make a point about their right to do so. This week they were joined by Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly—despite a last-minute attempt to secure an injunction against it by several French Muslim organisations. Charlie Hebdo reprinted a text from the Manifesto of Liberties Association, a French secular Muslim body, arguing that the orchestrated violence was a warning to Europe's Muslims from abroad that “You don't have the right to think ‘like Europeans'”, and urging the West to reaffirm Europe's tradition of free thought.

That some offence should be taken is understandable. The Muslim injunction against picturing recognised prophets is well known. Yet the point of proscribing images is to ensure that they do not become objects of worship in themselves. Muslims generally shrug indifferently at Christian representations of Jesus or Moses, both of whom Islam also venerates.

In this case, however, the caricaturing of Muhammad was clearly meant as a challenge. Several of the images were frankly insulting, particularly those that pictured the Muslim prophet as a terrorist. It adds to the sense, which has grown among Muslims since America launched its war on terror after September 11th, 2001, that their faith itself is being branded as violent and criminal. In addition, pious Muslims believe that Muhammad, while mortal, is the embodiment of manly perfection; at the same time a prophet, a moral example and a political leader. “He is not a believer”, runs one of the prophet's sayings, “if he does not love me more than his father or son or all people.”

Muslims worldwide have also grown keenly sensitive to what they see as western double standards. Freedom of speech is an admirable thing, says a Syrian member of parliament, but why do European countries forbid questioning of the Holocaust? Why are Muslim preachers jailed for incitement while anti-Muslim slurs go unpunished? And why, as a natural extension of this thought, does the West ignore Israel's atomic arsenal while questioning Iran's nuclear ambitions?

At the same time there is little understanding, in many Muslim countries, either of how Western democracies function, or how they have evolved historically towards enshrining maximum personal freedom. Danish protests that there are no laws empowering the government to intervene are met with disbelief. In both Yemen and Jordan, editors who republished the cartoons (which have now appeared in 22 different countries) were promptly arrested and their newspapers shut down.

[b]Leaders and manipulators[b]

Some protests seem to have been spontaneous; others have been deliberately manipulated by Islamist elements. While demonstrations have been widespread, the number of participants has generally not been large. Moderate leaders, from Iraq's foremost Shia authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, who heads the Organisation of Islamic Conferences, have called for Muslims to express their feelings peacefully. A fatwa issued by Egypt's highly respected grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, states that Muslims should understand that others will attack their faith; and although they should reject this “perverted behaviour”, he said, they should protest peacefully, with “wisdom and fair exhortation”.

This stand presents a clear contrast to the rabble-rousing tactics used by others. A Danish imam, Abu Laban, may have started the whole thing by touring the Middle East to drum up outrage, including distributing far more offensive cartoons of the Prophet (as a pig, as a paedophile) which he said had been “received” by Muslims in Denmark. Iran's supreme guide described the furore as a plot “concocted by Zionists angered by the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections”—though the Palestinian vote took place four months after the publication of the cartoons.

In Syria, a police state allied to Iran where rioters have torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies, witnesses noted men with walkie-talkies directing the crowds. Security was so ineffectual that camera crews accompanied arsonists into the buildings. In neighbouring Lebanon, authorities say that one-third of the 400 people arrested for setting fire to the Danish embassy and vandalising the surrounding Christian district were Syrians. On Wednesday Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, remarked that Iran and Syria had so stirred up the violence for their own ends that “the world ought to call them on it.” On Friday the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which has carried out several suicide attacks in Israel, threatened more violence.

Some analysts have speculated that the Muslim Brotherhood, a global fraternity of Islamist groups with branches in some 70 countries, may have a hand in the uproar. This is unlikely. The most vigorous Palestinian protests, for example, were led by militants from ostensibly secular Fatah, not Hamas, a Brotherhood offshoot. Protests in other Brotherhood strongholds, such as Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, have been relatively muted. A Brotherhood spokesman in Egypt accused some politicians of playing a “dirty game...to distort the image of the Islamic movement—to get the people to say they are not peaceful, not democratic, against free speech.”

It is more likely that Islamist forces of varying stripes have seized the opportunity both to assert their presence and to reinforce the sense of Muslim embattlement that suits their goals. Recent electoral advances by Islamists, in Turkey, Iraq and Egypt as well as Palestine, had already emboldened these forces. Other competing voices, too, have found the cartoon issue an ideal platform for promoting their version of the faith. On Egyptian television, one dapper preacher aimed a sermon at the West, urging westerners to love Muhammad; another, his rival for ratings, advised Muslims to dedicate a two-day fast to the victory of their prophet.

Some Muslims find all the hullabaloo distressing. “What it shows is that we lack confidence,” says the headmaster of a Cairo school. “If we were confident about our faith we wouldn't have to react so hysterically.” Many others, however, feel it marks an important precedent. In a Friday sermon at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, Saleh bin Humaid, a Saudi preacher, extolled the spirit of defiance that was unifying Muslims. “A great new spirit is flowing through the body of the Islamic nation,” he said. “The world can no longer ignore the nation and its feelings.”