I'm with the Danes. To refresh your jaded memories, from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten:
http://www.zombietime.com/...

This morning I read at the Washington Post a commentary by Flemming Rose, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, explaining what led him to initiate the request for cartoons.   I personally found his explanation very informative as I had not seen some of this before.    I would recommend that you read it for yourself but failing that, here are the relavent points.

The links between Flemming Rose -- the Culture editor of Jyllands-Posten who commissioned and published the "Mohammed the Terrorist" cartoons --- and the neo-cons in the United States --- in particular the toxic figure of Daniel Pipes, who thinks it might be a good idea to incarcarate pre-emptively Moslems in this country-- have already been well exposed.  See inter alia:

http://kurtnimmo.com/...
http://bellaciao.org/...
http://www.danielpipes.org/...

Today there is a fascinating article in The Guardian
which charts the background to all of this, which is the emergence of far-right xenophobic and Islamophobic politics in Denmark over the last decade

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

more below the fold

I have been browsing the websites of a number of national and international papers and news sites for some insights, but have come up with nothing.  For the most part, everyone is reporting the usual litany of violent and sensational acts, threats and accusations.  

There are calls for the murder or beheading of the cartoonists, the boycott of all things Danish, and lately from Iran, the proposal that the cartoons were published as part of a Zionist conspiracy to express anger over the victory of Hamas.  This is so absurd, it barely merits comment.  But more amazing is the fact he thinks he can say something like that, and not have a bunch of followers say:  "Hang on, the elections were in January, and the cartoons were published in September!"  

Well, seeing that the news coverage doesn't point that out either, maybe he knows the likelihood of that inflammatory comment being instantly defused is very, very minimal.  
Oh well, what else would we expect? More on the flip

Yesterday, I followed a link to slide.com that had posted the purported cartoons from the Jyllands-Posten.  I don't know if these are what were actually printed in that newspaper. Along with these were three "cartoons" of uncertain origin the were clearly offensive (in the "I know it when I see it" sense).  If anyone has the link from yesterday, I would appreciate them posting it in the thread.

I would be interested in how the cartoons are being read (deconstructed, interpreted) by Muslims.  And what the offense of each one is.  My reaction to the twelve Jyllands-Posten cartoons was that one would have to be told that they were images of Muhammed in order to make that interpretation.

And I would be interested in hearing how these are like of different from Jesus General's "Republican Jesus"

Sorry to pry you all away from SOTU discussions, but the stir caused by the Mohammed Cartoons published by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten seems like it ought to be worth some chitchat...  For those who haven't seen the original artwork, here's a feed of it:

http://newsguy.slide.com/...

(thanks to newsguy on Slide for posting)

This material is obviously obnoxious, but I gotta wonder if religious figures shouldn't be fair game for caricatures in the same manner that major political figures get lampooned by illustrators.  Seems like it's all in the same vein of artistic, visual critique.  

But this seems to be getting to the level where the Danish PM is apologizing to the world over this.  I can't see Bush apologizing to the world for a caricature of the Pope or of Jesus published in Time magazine or something.  Or wait, maybe I can; scratch that.  Anyway, feel free to talk amongst yourselves, I just thought this was interesting.