The Danish cartoons currently sparking so much violence in the Muslim world have put Western authorities in a tough spot. On the one hand, “they’re callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.” But “the new Molotov cocktail of technology and incendiary art has hastened the speed with which otherwise forgettable pictures are now globally transmitted.” As a result, unthinkable violence results, and the West is left scrambling to mitigate the damage.