When a car bomb exploded outside Denmark’s embassy in Islamabad on June 2, killing eight, it was easy to guess who had done it and why. Sure enough, some days later al-Qaeda took credit and confirmed its motive: the now-infamous Muhammed cartoons. Originally published in the Jyllands-Posten daily on September 30, 2005, they were reprinted by a raft of Danish dailies this February 13 in a show of solidarity with turban-bomb cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the target of three would-be assassins who had been arrested the day before. Presumably this rather surprising action — the Danish media, generally speaking, have given Jyllands-Posten a rough time for the past three years for upsetting the Muslims — was the immediate cause for the bombing.

It’s important to understand just what’s going on here, because it’s not just about yellowing cartoons – it’s about Western freedoms.

The first time around, it will be remembered, the cartoons occasioned riots, vandalism, flag burnings, and over 100 deaths worldwide; Danish embassies were torched in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Little of this mayhem was spontaneous. Most of it took place months after the cartoons were published, and was instigated by Danish imams, who had taken the cartoons (along with more incendiary pictures that they falsely represented as having been published in Denmark) around the Muslim world with the express intention of whipping up a frenzy. Their aim: to pressure tiny Denmark to rein in free speech. The frenzy materialised – but not the expected capitulation. The Danes, you see, have a gutsy side. It came out one night during the Nazi occupation: under the Germans’ noses, they ferried almost all their Jews to safety in Sweden.