c9 | It all becomes clearer.

Thousands of devout Muslims have been protesting in several countries because of cartoons that were printed in some European newspapers which depicted the Prophet Mohammed in a way that offended them. I've seen the cartoons that were printed, and seriously found maybe two of the twelve slightly troubling. They're just editorial cartoons. So the protests have really been perplexing.

Thanks to the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders, I now understand the issue a bit more. According to the student who actually printed copies of the cartoons and brought them to the Middle East to share with religious leaders,

'his booklet contained not only the 12 depictions of the Prophet Mohammed that had appeared in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September. He also filled it with hideous, amateur images of the Prophet as a pig, a dog, a woman and a child-sodomizing madman.

Flipping through the book yesterday, he explained that these images had been items of hate mail sent to his colleagues by right-wing extremists who disapproved of their activism. These images, he insistently demonstrated, were separated from the newspaper cartoons by several pages of letters. "How could anyone mistake these for the newspaper images?" he asked. "It cannot be that anyone would make this mistake."

But protesters in Lebanon and elsewhere have cited these images in their actions.'

You might be wondering whether Canada is likely to be engulfed in these protests, given our huge Muslim population? The Globe's Michael Valpy suggests some reasons why we may avoid the conflict here.