Every now and then, some Western media outlets provoke Muslims by insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The baiting often succeeds in eliciting Muslim outrage and sporadic violence.

The latest incident started with a Danish newspaper's caricature of the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. To add to the injury, Norwegian, French, German and Dutch newspapers reprinted the defamatory cartoons to "defend" the freedom of expression.

The real issue is not freedom of expression. Free speech is not and was never meant to be absolute.

Western European countries have laws that ban certain kinds of speech, including inciting anti-Semitism and racism. Some countries have laws against blasphemy and defamation. To Muslims, banning blasphemy against God and the Prophet Muhammad has a higher priority.

The West often underestimates Muslims' reverence for the Prophet Muhammad and is, therefore, startled by the fierce Islamic reaction to an insult against the prophet. Few in the West know that for Muslims, loving their prophet more than themselves is a matter of faith.

Further, the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist is a falsification of history. He was considered "Al-Amin," the trustworthy, by his people even before he received the prophethood. Once, when asked by some of his followers to invoke God's wrath on the enemies, he refused, saying he had been sent as a mercy unto mankind.

• • •

Unfortunately, some Muslims forget that loving their prophet means following him. Burning Danish diplomatic missions, as they did in Damascus and Beirut, to avenge the insult to the Prophet Muhammad is a complete disservice to him. Do Muslims need reminding that Prophet Muhammad forgave the people of Taif who had rejected his message of monotheism and had pelted him with stones, bloodying him?

And it is an irony that Muslims forget that the Prophet Muhammad encouraged freedom of expression. In the first battle of Islam, he changed the location of the battlefield against his own opinion -- due to the passionate advice of some young soldiers.

Part of the West's success today is from the freedom -- of expression, of thought, of religion -- that draws Muslims to it from their oppressed societies. For that, Muslims should be thankful to the West. After all, freedom is an Islamic value that the West has embraced, while Muslim societies have forsaken it.

Defending Prophet Muhammad requires allowing freedom and practicing compassion and forgiveness, as he did.

• • •

As for the West, there is a need to re-examine the notion of free speech. Without safeguards, the exercise of this freedom can be lethal, as we have seen. One may ask -- is it morally defensible to provoke violence and create a civilizational conflict for a cartoonist's freedom of expression?

The West already has laws to protect religious freedom, which Muslims and other peoples of faith admire. What it now needs to do is protect this freedom from being trampled by unbridled free speech. No one should have to insult Prophet Muhammad, Jesus or Moses to speak freely.

(Ekram Haque is a free-lance writer in Raleigh.)

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.