A CARTOON of the Prophet Muhammad donning explosive headgear detonated in the Islamic world--a picture telling a thousand fighting words. At least that is how many Muslims saw it, particularly those who responded to the depiction of Islam as an inherently violent religion with their own acts of violence.
Some imams and other Islamic leaders expressed frustration with the cartoon riots. Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, instructed Muslims to expect their religion to be attacked but to respond peacefully and with "wisdom and exhortation."
The response by Gomaa and others points to an emergent and overlooked global trend. Militants from the secular Fatah party, and not the Islamic-fundamentalist Hamas party, led the most vigorous protests. In addition, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt regretted, in a roundabout way, the violent response to the cartoons, accusing some politicians of striving "to distort the image of the Islamic movement--to get the people to say they are not peaceful, not democratic, against free speech."
Interestingly, you had Islamists (those that the West tends to see as the enemy) calling for calm and secularists (perceived as our natural allies) summoning religious rage in response to a perceived affront to Islam. That response highlights how difficult it is becoming to distinguish the religious from the political, and vice versa.
