MattyC, I agree with your overall point, but I'm not sure I agree with this:
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Showing the absurdities of the extremism is what's important. Which is why these cartoons should be targeting ISIS and other terrorist groups. Not Islam as a whole.
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The cartoons target one particular doctrine of Islam - anti-iconography and the prescribed consequences thereof. They don't target Islam as a whole (at least not without knowing their contents). This contest would not exist if there were not people willing to kill you (or do other bad things to you beyond denouncing you) simply for creating an icon of the prophet. That's a particular doctrine that is a bad thing for people to believe, and is in itself "extreme" at least by my definition.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to take a religion - a set of religious principles - and look at individual principles and say, "this is a bad thing to believe".