Quote Originally Posted by Dougal
I have read in a couple of places that the cartoons were published in an Egyptian newspaper as long ago as October 2005. Here is a link with what claims to be scanned copies of the newspaper: http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.c...ott-egypt.html I cannot read the paper but it looks genuine enough. If it is genuine, then the whole issue looks more and more like what I have suspected - that the unrest is not spontaneous demonstrations by outraged muslims but carefully orchestrated sh!t stirring by radical groups who wish to generate anti-west feelings for their own ends.
Hmm, dubious at best I think. Firstly look at the source, a blog called "Rantings of a Sandmonkey" with the foreward:

Be forewarned: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not, please sod off.
Even presuming it is legitimate (and I leaning that way) there's no way to tell the context without being able to understand the articles. There's every reason to believe that it was/is critical in fact.

And all of that notwithstanding, the blog author seems to make a big deal of the date they were published - October '05 - which given that the original controversy was instigated by an Sept '05 article in the Jyllands-Posten would make perfect chronological sense.

And in any event the majority of the protests were in response to the cartoons being reprinted throughout Europe during the period following initial publication. Not something that Muslim radical groups could really be said to have had any control over.