This story, alas, is far from finished, though there are more and more efforts to calm the waters.

Today’s Arab News is replete with news and opinion pieces. They’re all worth reading in their entirety. I’ve excerpted below:

● Wanted: Cool Heads and Clear Visions
Abeer Mishkhas, abeermishkhas@arabnews.com

The year 2006 marks the beginning of the Festival of Muslim Cultures that takes place in the UK for the next 18 months. The festival is mainly a celebration of arts and literature from the Muslim world. It began with a large exhibition, opened by the Prince of Wales, entitled “Palace and Mosque” which featured Islamic artifacts from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The festival also includes films, plays, art exhibitions, poetry evenings and Qur’an recitation. The organizers of the festival have said that they lack the necessary funding to carry out all these activities. Surely it is obvious that a festival of this nature will improve the public’s idea and image of Islam. It should be a powerful counter to the many forces seeking to tarnish our religion. Such events as the festival should be highlighted and written extensively about in our press — especially at a time when our relations with the West could certainly be better. Our press, however, is concerned with other things. One wonders how that can be. We complain all the time about distortions of our image in the West and we jump to attack when something like the Danish cartoons happen, but we seldom realize that we have done nothing to create our image or uphold it.

Of course we should protest against the cartoons — but I do think that we always miss the point and avoid being positive…

● Editorial: Return to Sanity

The fallout from the Danish cartoons gets worse: 11 demonstrators now dead in Afghanistan and Norwegian soldiers there attacked, an attack on an international observers’ mission in Hebron, Bangladeshi demonstrators trying to attack the Italian Embassy in Dhaka. The editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that started it all, has a lot on his conscience. The situation is dangerously out of control. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has little credibility in the Muslim world but we can agree with him on one thing — that this is now a “global crisis”.

The air is being poisoned with blanket accusations and counter allegations — by Europeans that Muslims who are increasingly intolerant, by Muslims that it is the Europeans who are increasingly intolerant. That is a gross exaggeration on both parts…

What is needed now is some calm. We do not want see a single extra death as a result of these odious cartoons. Boycotts, yes; that is a personal choice. Demonstrations, yes, providing they are peaceful. Violence, attacks and threats, no…

● Envoy’s Advert Fails to Impress Many
Javid Hassan, Arab News

RIYADH, 9 February 2006 — Abdul Wahid Al-Humaid, deputy labor minister for planning, has questioned the claim of Danish Ambassador to the Kingdom Hans Klingenberg that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has “condemned all such statements and … expressions of opinion that are aimed at disfiguring the picture of a group of people based on their religious or ethnic association.”

In advertisements released in some Arabic newspapers, the ambassador said the government of Denmark respects Islam. Referring to the advertisement, the deputy labor minister said it does not necessarily mean that the Danish people respect Islam. He cited public opinion polls that showed that about 80 percent of the people covered by the survey were opposed to tendering any apology…

And finally, there’s a piece jointly written by the Prime Ministers of Spain and Turkey:

● A Call for Respect, Calm ReflectionRecep Tayyip Erdogan & Jose L. Rodriguez Zapatero, Arab News

With growing concern, we are witnessing the escalation in disturbing tensions provoked by the publication, in European newspapers, of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that Muslims consider deeply offensive. We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation, which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake. Therefore, it is necessary to make an appeal for respect and calm, and let the voice of reason be heard.

Last year, when the heads of government of Turkey and Spain presided over the launching of work on the Alliance of Civilizations Project, we did so based en a firm belief: That we needed initiatives and instruments to stop the spiral of haired and obfuscation that, in itself, constitutes a threat to international peace and security.