Was their initial reason not to see if the artists would self censor themselves? Something that a lot of people seem to do in relation to Islam far more than they do for say Christianity (just look at the GIS I posted, imagine "Muhammed Lol" as a picture series?).
The Danish government can condem the newspaper however they are right that they cannot apologise on behalf of an independent entity. As for the paper printing these was an issue of free speech based on a "good" reason. Imagine if I asked for images Jesus following the Catholic Priest + "small children" season? I would imagine that I would get a lot of really quite distasteful pictures however the point of the asking is a valid one (to see if people will censor themselves).
Its hardly a childish example. Is printing images of the Japanese/Chinese war offensive (lots of corpses, mass graves etc?), its a historical fact which the Japanese basically say didn't happen... am I offending them? Or perhaps we should ensure that all Western women wear Burkhas outside for fear of upsetting Islam?
Everything you do can cause offense to someone (in Britain for example myself and my Black friends can walk down the street calling each other Nigger and Ho and not offend ourselves, however if someone else believes this to be racist it becomes a racist incident) despite the fact that they have nothing to do with our conversation/arguement). To monitor everything for offense is silly, heck I find PC terms very offensive (Horizontally challenged? Deferred success?---- special?) Lets call a spade a spade here and get over ourselves, no matter what we do we can offend others... the paper wasn't looking to offend Islam it was looking at an interesting article... if they were delibrately trying to offend thats a different story but they have taken this way too far, attacking Embassies? Threatening Terrorist attacks? Offering to exterminate us... arrest them all and let Justice decide.
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