First, sadly the proliferation of idiocy about this shows no signs of abating. The prime reason here, in my opinion, is that it plays into the hands of the Salafi types who generally disapprove of relations with non-Muslims on principle, and are, in my experience, always seeking levers to blow up stories of how awful 'infidel' X are to the Muslims, etc.

In other words, typical ethnic separatist style pot stirring, any excuse. Builds their agenda for return to their mythical purified past, with the story of how awfully 'oppressed' their religious confreres are at the hands of the infidel, etc. A pack of exagerations, and often lies, but typical.

This sort of behaviour, deliberate fanning of separatist and anti-Euro/Xian feeling in the community (which is being hosted by the very people the Salafistes love to hate) is at once dangerous and hypocritical (as is the overdone reaction by many Muslims in the MENA region who are quite happy to repeat the most prejudiced nonsense about others - the enduring human - I do stress human - trait of navel gazing hypocrisy). While I have been banging on about the importance of discrimination against the immigrant Muslim communities in Europe, particularly France, the flip side of the coin is the anti-integrationist hypocritical lying agitprop of the Salafiste seperatists that want to prevent 'Europeanisation' of these communities. These people are as much a problem as the bigots on the other side of the equation. Mirror bigots, as it were.

I have to say that as reported in the Telegraph, the Danes should take a close look at the Imams who went pimping the dossier about how evil the Danes are, including several particularly nasty cartoons that were never published, and suprrise surprise, are of somewhat unknown provenance.

The Guardian also has a good comment in Prophetic fallacy.

Finally, the Canadian Muslim Association has possibly the most reasonable commentary to date, as reported in the Globe & Mail:

“The protests in the Middle East have proven that the cartoonist was right,” said Tarek Fatah, a director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

“It's falling straight into that trap of being depicted as a violent people and proving the point that, yes, we are.”

Quite right.

Sadly the general reaction in MENA merely confirms that too much of the population is juvenile, under-socialised and basically a bunch of rubes. That is not a permanent problem, but it is a problem.