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Originally Posted by fotze
He didn't say they burn the flags.
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In retrospect, it's true you could take his comment that way.
EDIT: An examination on where the spark came from that lit the fuse on the Muslim side, a December meeting of 57 Muslim nations in Mecca, the Organization of the Islamic Conference::
"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference when the O.I.C. took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that 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.
He 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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/in...rtner=homepage
Cowperson