One of the things worth mentioning is that by many accounts the relatively harmless Danish cartoons are not what really caused the riots.
I can't find the link at the moment, but apparently the reason for the long gap between the reaction and the original publication (which was in September) had more to do with a small group of fanatics who tried to fan the flames by taking "the cartoons" abroad along with extra, blatantly more offensive cartoons, as well as made up quotes about how all the Danes thought Muslims were pigs, and the like.
That the original Danish cartoons were reprinted all over the place just fans the propoganda-inspired flames. For the mostly poverty-stricken and probably largely NOT literate in European languages crowd, this is just "the offensive cartoons" being reprinted everywhere, yet more proof that the what the instigators said is right, the West hates them, the West is to blame for their lot in life.
Which allows our propoganda folk to point fingers the other way, "Islam is dangerous, Islam is evil, Islam is to blame for your fear and uncertainty".
Re: Cartoons
I can't find the link at the moment, but apparently the reason for the long gap between the reaction and the original publication (which was in September) had more to do with a small group of fanatics who tried to fan the flames by taking "the cartoons" abroad along with extra, blatantly more offensive cartoons, as well as made up quotes about how all the Danes thought Muslims were pigs, and the like.
That the original Danish cartoons were reprinted all over the place just fans the propoganda-inspired flames. For the mostly poverty-stricken and probably largely NOT literate in European languages crowd, this is just "the offensive cartoons" being reprinted everywhere, yet more proof that the what the instigators said is right, the West hates them, the West is to blame for their lot in life.
Which allows our propoganda folk to point fingers the other way, "Islam is dangerous, Islam is evil, Islam is to blame for your fear and uncertainty".
Gotta love the blame-mongers.