Jarndyce ably sums up his position on those cartoons and, incidentally, pretty much sums up my attitude to them too.

Lenin chooses to see caricatures of a long-dead desert Arab as a cipher for how the West sees Muslims. I don't know where he lives, but it's not how we see Muslims round here. We tend to see them as "mate" or "neighbour".

And all quite different, of course, from saying I sympathise with the actual pictures or their, largely crude and unpleasant, message or context. Or that I personally condone offending the devout gratuitously.

Go read. Especially as it looks like being his last post for quite some time...