Thorough comment, as always. I've been chewing on the racist argument since I read DeAnader's postings in this thread. I think you're totally correct in that we should take care that our freedom of speech doesn't get hijacked by xenophobes for nationwide indoctrination. History has been there before and it didn't end so well. And even although xenophobia appears to be on the march in Denmark, I don't agree that the cartoons were intended as a 'fuck you' to their Muslim minority. In fact, that would also undermine the racist argument, since there are plenty of Muslim minorities which are NOT Arab. Given, the Arab/Turk/Persian minorities are the largest ones. If I take the gist of this it is partly about the rise of fundamentalist Muslim regimes like Saudi Arabia and their dangerously narrow vision, reminiscent of Christian imperial times. It all comes back to oil again, BTW.

And the violent responses to the cartoons argues against the racism issue as well, since all the violence was especially founded on the blasphemous content of the cartoons - not the caricaturing of the people an sich. If there were protests on that, perhaps they went through official channels as well, I don't know. Fact is, the demands of the fundamentalists is not based on contempt of race - so right now, I see it as a side issue. One we should be watchful for, but not the one that's at hand.