It would express so much about knee-jerk Islamic responses, media manipulation, the characterisation of all Muslims as fanatics, intolerance and tolerance.

That would make the whole event a beautiful piece of conceptual art. In which case, I appreciate the ambiguity. So, probably erring on the side of optimism, I am treating it (provisionally ) as some sort of situationist art.

And I sort of hope that the Egyptian cartoons were created by the Swedish artist or vice versa.

One completely irrelevant thing about this debate is that the Egyptian lad is a genius cartoonist. The Swedish lad is outclassed here.

To be fair, Lars Vilks isn’t actually a cartoonist, which explains the quality of his drawings. He’s a conceptual artist, and his drawings of Mohammad were meant as a critique of the Swedish art community – it’s a very internal affair. As I think says on the egyptian blog somewhere, Vilks actually considers that very blog a PART of his artwork! Because everyone’s reactions to his drawings are part of it… I guess. I don’t really get artists. 😉