It never fails to amaze how some in the Press, who claim to drive vehicles for social change quickly hide behind the façade of freedom of speech when things go awry.

The world today is once again seeing the inflammatory results of a provocative Press experiment, this one by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten which was aimed to test the tolerance of the Muslim world.

Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor decided last September to publish 12 satirical drawings of Prophet Muhammad.

The cartoons included one showing the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb and another depicting the prophet as running out of virgins for his suicide bombers.

Juste quickly apologized for the offence the cartoons caused after a minor uproar in Denmark.

But the journalistic buffoonery was republished by newspapers in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary and Jordan in a so called show of solidarity for freedom of speech and western democratic values.

Many Muslims viewed the republication as a deliberate provocation and this has led to riots, protests and embassy fires across the globe.

Islam bans pictorial representations of Muhammad out of respect for the prophet.

But what has infuriated Muslims more than anything else is the association of the Prophet with terrorism.

These cartoons have reinforced the perception by many in the Muslim world that the western media never hesitates to launch campaigns to distort and discredit Islam.

The newspapers which published the cartoons have come up with gratuitous and ridiculously oversimplified explanations for their actions.

These are the same chaps who won’t run pictures of their dead soldiers but have no problem poking fun at religious figures.

Their arguments about supporting press freedom ring hollow, especially when some of their columnists and readers propagate that the violent reaction is further proof that Islam is a religion of intolerance and hatred.

They don’t understand why Muslims and for that matter millions of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus are upset about the cartoons.

Some don’t care and see this manufactured controversy as a circulation driver.

The reverence of Muslims for their Prophet is not something to be toyed with.

Perhaps the disrespectful lot which ran these cartoons could learn a little from the passion shown by Muslims for their religion.

Just because some people go around wearing Fat Buddha T-shirts, slippers adorned with Hindu deities and make jokes about Jesus Christ, does not give anyone a license to mock the Prophet Muhammad.

This is not an issue of whether you can do it.

This is a question of whether you should do it.

The newspapers which ran these cartoons did nothing for press freedom.

Their notion of freedom of expression is one without responsibility and respect.

It is a freedom not worth having.