CAIRO, February 8, 2006 - With the Muslim fury over the Danish cartoons turning violent and claiming lives, calls are now growing and getting louder for Muslims to stop their violent protests. These calls come from scholars, Muslim leaders, Islamic organizations and countries, in addition to counterparts in the west and the international community at large.

"The sabotage done by some Muslims in some [Arab] capitals in response to the offensive cartoons is unacceptable and should be denounced," respected scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who heads the Dublin-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) told Al-Jazeera’s Shari`ah and Life program.

"We don't want the expression of our condemnation (of the cartoons) to be used by some to portray a distorted image of Islam," Mohamed Rashid Qabani, Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim scholar, said.

"It is regrettable that certain people have poorly expressed their protest against the publication by European newspapers of images that are offensive to the Prophet," said Syrian Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Badreddine Hassun.

“We believe freedom of the press entails responsibility and discretion, and should respect the beliefs and tenets of all religions. But we also believe the recent violent acts surpass the limits of peaceful protest,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Organization of the Islamic Conference head Ekmelettin Ihsanoglu and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in a joint statement.

The urgent question now seems to be: What do Muslims want? As simple as the question may be, the answer, however, has become as complex as the issue itself has.

When controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist, who believed that was the only way to deal with what the majority of Muslims viewed as Van Gogh's disrespect for their faith, one of the several consequences of the murder was calls within the European country for a legislation banning "scornful blasphemy".

Dutch justice minister Piet Hein Donner told parliament in November 2004, that the law was needed to curb "hateful comments", whether oral or written, that were destabilizing the country, according to British daily Telegraph.

"If the opinions have a potentially damaging effect on society, the government must act. It is not about religion specifically, but any harmful comments in general."

Donner, a Christian-Democrat, added then that strict enforcement was needed to stop "explosive material" setting off yet more violence.

The minister definitely was not defending the murderer nor was he attacking the victim. He was rather addressing the root causes of problems that may develop into conundrums, somehow similar to the one at hand now.

It goes without saying that Islam, like all other religions, gives utmost priority to preserving the human soul. In this regard, Van Gogh's murder was condemned by the absolute majority of Muslims, regardless of the man's abusive portrait of their faith.

"The sabotage done by some Muslims in some [Arab] capitals in response to the offensive cartoons is unacceptable and should be denounced," Qaradawi said.

A similar case to the cartoons' war erupted when Newsweek published a report on US guards reportedly abusing Muslims' holy book, the Noble Qur'an. Massive protests exploded around the Muslim world and several people lost their lives. After pressure from the US administration, the report was withdrawn. Anyway, tempers cooled down and life went on.

But things seem profoundly different this time, with Western media – most of it at least – reporting the case as a clash between "freedom of expression" and "respect for religions", on the one hand. Muslim media, on the other, handles the issue from a sentimental angel, focusing on the abusive imaging of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) as an insult to over 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide.

The whole issue gradually turned into "us" and "them" and now that things are getting out of hand and lives are threatened, everybody is calling for calm. Eventually, calm is likely to find its feet on the ground, but unless the causes are addressed, crises of the rest remain a possibility.

Wise voices and logic now say that freedom of expression can never be used as an excuse to mock others' beliefs or hurt the feelings of people by showing disrespect for their religious symbols, regardless of what we may think of these symbols.

The statement by an Italian cardinal – commenting on the Danish cartoons - could be very revealing in this respect.

"Freedom of satire which offends the feelings of others, and in this case the feelings of entire peoples, becomes an abuse of power", Cardinal Achille Silvestrini told the daily Corriere della Sera February 3.

Muslims now demand a clear guarantee such incident will not stand a repeat, not by curbing freedom of expression as some in the West may be propagating, but by criminalizing "abuse of power".

"The United Nations must pass binding resolutions obliging all countries to respect religions and religious symbols similar to the anti-Semitism laws," Abdelaziz Belkhadem, Algerian minister of State told IOL days earlier.

Saad Al-Din Al-Othmani, the secretary general of the Moroccan Islamic-leaning Justice and Development party, also called during a march in Rabat Saturday, February 4, for "adopting an international charter on respecting all faiths and religions."

"The point is not to restrict freedom of speech but to give it direction so that weak groups do not feel insulted or mocked," Muslim lawyer Abid Q Raja told Norwegian daily Dagsavisen.

Concluding, I recall what Bashy Quraishy, president of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), wrote on IOL: "Did this cartoon series help the integration of minorities, did it make radicals more mature, did it give the ignorant Danes more knowledge of Islam, or did it bring people together? If the answer is yes, then I welcome these cartoons. If the answer is no, then we should ask ourselves whose political agenda did this provocation serve."