anyone watching that <snip> on prime time

My name is URL wrote: »

The whole reason that pictures cause 'offense' is because it's a taboo in Islam to depict the prophet

Kinda MniU. It's a little more than that and quite the different clash of cultures.

Most easy going folks in the west see Islam as "ah sure it's like Christianity" and it is in many ways, but in many ways it is most certainly not.

1) Christian texts from the very start of the faith in the 1st century were examined and open to interpretation, even change, as they were seen as divinely inspired, rather than divine. In Islam the Quran is seen as the direct word of god and as such is beyond external/historical interpretation.

2) Islam is a religion of society itself, in faith and politic and practical, the separation of faith and politics is beyond the Pale in Islam. While Christianity has been very political over the centuries, it retains the separation. IE nowhere in Islam will you find the equivalent of "my kingdom is not of this earth" or " give unto Caesar what is Caesar's".

Islam was born and bred of the middle east, an extension of Judaism and Christianity, Christianity was "blessed" to have been born of that area, but fostered as a small child by the Greco Roman world and it's philosophies(hence Christians can eat pork and not have boys mickeys mutilated as tenets of their faith. The historical Jesus would likely have a nuclear powered rabbinical shítfit about that)

3) it depends on the "Islam" you look at. Shia folks have little issue with portraits of people and animals, that's a Sunni thang. Cliff notes, as the Americans say and in Very broad strokes..: Shia = Catholics, in spirit and in taste. Sunni = Protestants, all the way from easy going anglicans to puritan fcukwits.

TL;DR? to a Muslim, even a laissez faire Muslim, any attack on their prophet hits deep, way deeper than your average European may think, even a religious one. It's more an insult to them, as much as to the faith/prophet.