European editors who printed and reprinted cartoons of Mohammed the Prophet in the name of freedom could be preparing to get some lessons now in limits to freedom. All because the cartoons were not just offensive to Muslims and unfunny to others, they just might have been illegal.

"We are considering action over a criminal complaint made to us," Lykke Soerensen from the office of the Danish Director of Public Prosecution told Outlook on phone from Copenhagen.

Even Europeans haven't enjoyed depicting the Prophet with a ticking bomb for a head.

It was Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten that first published the cartoons. "Article 140 of the Danish Criminal Code that deals with blasphemy, and Article 266(b) that covers discrimination on racial or religious grounds could cover the complaint," Soerensen said. The complaint made by "a private person and a number of organisations" was earlier turned down by a regional court. The Director of Public Prosecution is now considering it on appeal.

After Jyllands Posten, some other European newspapers showed the cartoons, to really make a show that such material can be published. "It is at the core of our culture that the most sacred things can be subject to criticism, laughter and satire," Roger Koeppel, editor of the German newspaper Die Welt said in his justification of a reprinting of the cartoons. But in Germany too, the publication has raised legal questions.

Celebrated Berlin lawyer Christian Schertz says German law provides for jail of up to three years for insults to religious belief. "And those beliefs are not confined to Christian ones alone, "he says. Making fun of the godly is rarely a laughing matter. German member of parliament Christian Stroebele spent years defending a group of comedians who put up a rude show making fun of Virgin Mary's virginity. The comedians were sentenced to prison by one court after another and then another. It took the orders of a fourth court to free them.

For once, the English Channel made Britain happily un-European: none of the usually robust newspapers touched them. "I don't want to sound self-congratulatory, but there's a greater sensitivity here to things seen to be sacrilegious," Granta editor Ian Jack told Outlook. "The view was that printing the cartoons would only do harm."

Some of Europe was making a point that no one in Britain wanted to make. The portrayal of the head of Mohammed as a ticking bomb was seen for what it was: a crude thought crudely expressed; contempt disguised as a cartoon and presented hopelessly as principle. "It was republished to make a statement that we believe in freedom of expression, we are in Europe, and you like it or lump it," Jack said. Unlike France, Britain takes a pragmatic view of race and religion. "When it comes to getting on with other people, we have had more success here."

From a debate within the media, the controversy is now moving to a debate over a conflict between laws that guarantee freedom of expression, and others against blasphemy. Many of the laws intended to restrain religious provocation were meant against fiery imams like Abu Hamza, who was sentenced in London this week. Courts in Denmark—and maybe elsewhere—could now face the piquancy of peaceful Muslims in legal pursuit of a provocative European media in the dock. Material for a future cartoon, possibly.

The European court record so far is almost entirely loaded against Muslims. Last week, a Rome court sentenced a Muslim to eight months in prison because he removed a crucifix from his room in a hospital. A German court handed over a Yemeni social worker to US authorities just because they wanted him. But from the margins, they have been pushed to all over Europe—at least some Muslims plan to make a legal fight of it.

It might not be a case for freedom to be proud to defend. Someone might want to consider that in the name of freedom, the historic European struggle for liberty, equality and fraternity should now find expression in a dozen cartoons of Mohammed that have offended Muslims for their portrayal of their prophet, and others over their sense of what a cartoon should be. Because not even on the European side has anyone said they enjoyed the portrayal of Mohammed with a ticking bomb for a head. European editors have chosen to defend it as the "freedom to satirise". That inflation of language over content could be cartoon material too: this ugly image is now satire.

Court cases now could dig some underlying moral assumptions out from beneath a civilised Europe facing up to violent Islam. There is an undeniable fringe of violent Islamists in many parts of the Muslim world, but the record on the other side is not all clean either. More than 40,000 Iraqis were bombed to death as they fled back from Basra after the first Gulf war—the equivalent of shooting a defeated soldier in the back, the unthinkable by the oldest codes of war. The killing was stopped finally because it sickened the pilots. If an Arabic paper had then drawn a cartoon of Jesus Christ in the shape of a cruise missile, it would be a product of the ugly mind of an uncivilised Arab. One chap with a bomb is a terrorist; when you kill thousands from the air, it's a "taking out". What would be an expression of customary ugliness in an Arabic paper becomes in Europe an expression of freedom. It would be cartoonish to pretend this is satire.

The publication of the cartoons could translate inside a courtroom as premeditated provocation. Jan Lund, arts editor of Jyllands Posten, declared: "The intention was to provoke a debate about self-censorship in our coverage of Muslim issues." What this would do to Muslims was not considered. In effect: Here, I'll spit on you to show you how free I am.

"If this was so-called freedom of speech, it could still have ended with the publication in Denmark four months ago, but the re-publication in so many newspapers in Europe was mischievous," Shamsuddin Agha from the Indian Muslim Federation told Outlook. "Moving the courts now is the peaceful way to take this forward."