An insult to Islam.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Religious people of all faiths bristle at anything they consider sacrilege, so it's easy to understand why Muslims around the world are incensed at publication in a Danish newspaper of a dozen cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. On Mohammed's own instructions, Islamic law forbids depictions of the prophet to prevent idolatry.

Several of the cartoons insultingly blended images of the prophet with symbols of terrorism. One shows Muhammad wearing a turban made to look like a bomb. Another shows Muhammad standing on a cloud, greeting dead suicide bombers with an allusion to the promised reward to martyrs: "Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!"

It's ugly stuff; as vicious as the anti-Jewish cartoons that regularly appear in the Arab press. Unfortunately, overreaction by some Muslims has prevented discussion of the important and complex free-speech issues raised by the controversy.

In the anti-Western rhetoric of the Arab street, angry mobs demand death for those they accuse of defaming Islam's holiest figure, punctuated with bursts of AK-47 fire. "Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up," the protesters chant.

Many outside the Muslim world may not understand the pain and anger evoked by such blasphemy, but many Muslims in the Arab world are equally blind to the damage their violent reactions do to Western attitudes toward Islam. "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."

By the same token, the secular media in the United States and Europe have a responsibility to demonstrate that they know the difference between a sacred cow that merits criticism and a sacred belief that deserves respect.