At the end of last week, it was starting to look like some sort of sanity might prevail in the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

On Friday, MediaWatchWatch reported that moderate Muslims in Denmark have started organising and speaking out against the extremist Imams. Councillor Bünyamin Simsek, one of the organisers of the moderate network, which is based in the city of Århus, which saw serous rioting in the wake of Jyllands-Posten publication of the cartoons observed:

There is a large group of Muslims in this city who want to live in a secular society and adhere to the principle that religion is an issue between them and God and not something that should involve society

And, on Sunday, The Brussels Journal reported that the Danish imams who originally protested about the cartoons have announced that they want to bring an end to the dispute.

They also mention that moderate Muslims in Denmark are now speaking out and quote Hadi Kahn, an IT consultant and the chairman of the Organization of Pakistani Students in Denmark, who says that he does not feel he’s being represented by the more conservative Muslim groups and that “We have no need for imams in Denmark. They do not do anything for us.”

However, there is always someone who wants to throw oil on the fire.

Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia’s top cleric has called on Denmark to punish the Jyllands-Posten over the cartoons.

“I call on officials in the Danish government to call to account the paper that published these cartoons and force it to apologise for its ugly crime,” Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh said in a statement published on Wednesday.

“It should impose a penalty as a deterrent on those who took part in provoking this subject. That’s the least Muslims demand,” it said.

Although it looked like Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, had started to diffuse the row with a New Year address that defended free speech but urged Danes to exercise the right without inciting hatred, some people saw this as a retreat and there have been a spate of mobile phone text messages circulating in Saudi Arabia in recent weeks calling on Saudis to boycott Danish products.

And Reporters Without Borders have voiced concern at the news that the Jordanian Parliament has called for the punishment of the cartoonist who drew the twelve cartoons, apparently not realising that twelve cartoonists were involved.

“Islam forbids any representation of the Prophet and we realize that these cartoons may upset some people, but it is not acceptable for the parliament of a supposedly democratic country to call for the cartoonists to be punished,” the press freedom organisation said.

“Those who so desire may bring a complaint against the newspaper, but politicians should under no circumstances should call for direct reprisals against journalists,” Reporters Without Borders continued. “The cartoonists have already received death threats and these new statements put them in further danger.”

They do note, however, that an agreement was reached between Denmark and the Arab League on 5 January not to pursue the controversy any further.

And finally, can I point you all in the direction of this article in the Lebanese Daily Star:

Here are a few facts we should remember. However offensive any of the 12 cartoons were, they did not incite violence against Muslims. For an example of incitement, though, one must go back a few weeks before the cartoons were published. In August, the Danish authorities withdrew for three months the broadcasting license of a Copenhagen radio station after it called for the extermination of Muslims. Those were real threats and the government protected Muslims - the same government later condemned for not punishing the newspaper that published the cartoons.

Second, the cartoon incident belongs at the very center of the kind of debate that Muslims must have in the European countries where they live - particularly after the Madrid train bombings of 2003 and the London subway bombings of 2005. While right-wing anti-immigration groups whip up Islamophobia in Denmark, Muslim communities wallow in denial over the increasing role of their own extremists.

As just one example, last August Fadi Abdullatif, the spokesman for the Danish branch of the militant Hizb-ut-Tahrir organization, was charged with calling for the killing of members of the Danish government. He distributed leaflets calling on Muslims in Denmark to go to Fallujah in Iraq and fight the Americans, and to kill their own leaders if they obstructed them. Police in Denmark have been on alert since the London bombings, after which at least three extremist Web sites warned that Denmark could be the next target. There are 500 Danish troops working alongside American and British troops in Iraq.

Not only does Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organization banned in many Muslim countries, have a branch in Denmark, but Abdullatif has a history of calling for violence that he then justifies by referring to freedom of speech - the very notion the Danish newspaper made use of to publish the cartoons. In October 2002, Abdullatif was found guilty of distributing racist propaganda after Hizb-ut-Tahrir handed out leaflets that made threats against Jews by citing verses from the Koran. He was given a 60-day suspended sentence.

Abdullatif used the Koran to justify incitement to violence! And we still wonder why people associate Islam with violence?

Muslims must honestly examine why there is such a huge gap between the way we imagine Islam and our prophet, and the way both are seen by others. Our offended sensibilities must not be limited to the Danish newspaper or the cartoonist, but to those like Fadi Abdullatif whose actions should be regarded as just as offensive to Islam and to our reverence for the prophet. Otherwise, we are all responsible for those Danish cartoons.

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