Okay, so why are the rampaging Muslims so angry? The caricatures of Mohammed are mild--this is the most outrageous. One cartoon is even funny, a first for the Danish Editorial Cartoonist Union, with its depiction of the Prophet standing on a cloud, greeting ascended suicide bombers with the warning, "Stop, stop, we're fresh out of virgins!" It reminds me of an Easter Monday cartoon I once printed in a student paper, which caused a storm. It depicted an anthropologist emerging from the burial cave of Jesus with skeletal remains, shouting "call off the holiday, I've found his bones". How tame it seems now, how wild it seemed then. Having been prosecuted on two continents for publishing satirical cartoons, I am well aware of the power of the pen to inflame.

4 Read full story: The Cartoons That Shook the World (via Countepunch)

[PHOTO] ZHU Ming, Born 1972 Changsha, Hunan province. Zhu Ming uses bubbles in his performances to evoke the fleetingness of life and feelings of isolation from society. This photograph documents a performance that took place in Beijing. The artist sealed himself inside a bubble and then coated the inside with Chinese ink. After 40 minutes, the bubble was pumped full of water. The photograph records the moment when the paint was washed away and the naked artist emerged into the open.

Two Jordanian newspaper editors who published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have been arrested. Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi are accused of insulting religion under Jordan's press and publications law.

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'Abuse of freedom'

Mr Momani's arrest came earlier on Saturday, a day after Jordanian King Abdullah condemned the cartoons as an unnecessary abuse of freedom of speech. Mr Momani's paper, Shihan, had printed three of the cartoons, alongside an editorial questioning whether the angry reaction to them in the Muslim world was justified.

"Muslims of the world be reasonable," wrote Mr Momani.

"What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"

Pakistani observers point out that while the protests may have done little to bring the alleged blasphemers under pressure they have certainly conveyed the destructive potential of injured religious sentiment to the outside world.

"Is this the image of ourselves that we want to paint for the outside world?" Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Ellahi asked of the riots in Lahore.

"Are we trying to convince the West that Muslims are indeed violent people?"

Maybe not, but perhaps Pakistan's religious leadership may not be averse to the idea of demonstrating to the world that Pakistanis remain a deeply religious people despite Gen Musharraf's liberal rhetoric.

And if demonstrating this requires arson and looting, it may be a small price in the mind of the country's religious leadership for emphasising an orthodox cultural agenda which has been under consistent pressure since the September 2001 attacks on the US.

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Western observers may be baffled at the images of Muslim rioters burning the properties of other Muslims in protest at sacrilege committed by Danes. But they may find the situation easier to understand if they give a thought to what might be the real target of the rioters.

Is it a bunch of nameless and faceless cartoonists living in Denmark or a government at home which is threatening their orthodoxy with its liberal rhetoric?