Realizing the Danger and Reconsidering.

The article focuses on the views of the author on the controversy resulting from the publication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. The decision of the Danish newspaper "Jyllands-Posten" to invite artists to express their views of the Prophet Muhammad, was provocative, ill-advised and ignorant, as was the defiant reprinting of the cartoons by other papers in Europe and elsewhere. Against the background of growing anti-Muslim xenophobia in Europe, the searing images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, it confirmed the worst fears among many that the Western response to terrorist attacks by specific groups was to target a whole religion.