Interesting piece from the Toronto Star:

“The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance. But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — and the role its member governments played in the outrage — was something of a turning point. After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of protests that ended with Danish embassies in flames. As early as October, Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors, and Arab ambassadors lobbied Arab governments. “It was no big deal until the Islamic conference, when the OIC took a stance against it,” said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, Egypt. Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam. Hanafi said the demonstrations “started as a visceral reaction — of course they were offended — and then you had regimes taking advantage, saying, `Look, this is the democracy they’re talking about.’” The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.”

And note this:

“The wave swept many in the region. Sheik Muhammed Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it. “For me, honestly, this didn’t seem so important,” Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus Christ in Christian countries. “I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries,” he recalled.”