At first sight, the storm that's erupted over the publication of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands Posten, one of Denmark's most widely read newspapers, has centred around the question of freedom of expression. When Danish Muslims asked the newspaper for an apology, its editor refused, citing freedom of expression and of media. When the ambassadors of 11 Islamic countries lodged a protest against the cartoons at the Danish foreign office and asked the government to secure an apology from the newspaper, the foreign minister refused on the same grounds.

But a closer examination of the way in which the storm has arisen shows that this is one of those cases in which an irreproachable principle has been used to hide far from laudable motives.

What's scary is that not just the Danish paper, 20 more in other countries reprinted the Prophet cartoons.

Jyllands Posten's editor claimed that he had published the cartoons as a protest against the self-censorship being practised by a large number of Danish writers and artists when dealing with Islam. This had come to light when an author who had written a children's book on the Prophet complained that he could not find anyone to illustrate it. To break the taboo, he had invited a number of cartoonists to do so and 12 had responded.

But the subliminal message carried by the cartoons showed that this explanation was a shade disingenuous. While Islamic organisations focused their anger on the very depiction of the Prophet, which they claim is blasphemous, the truly offensive feature of the cartoons was how they depicted him. All but one of the 12 cartoons linked the Prophet directly to Islamic terrorism. Not only was he portrayed as a violent person, one actually showed his turban as a bomb with a lit fuse. The naked animosity in these cartoons towards Islam prompted the Council of Europe to criticise their publication. Its committee of ministers declared that "a seam of intolerance" ran through a section of the Danish media. Former US president Clinton called them "appalling" and "totally outrageous".

What happened in Denmark was bad enough. But it is the reaction of the media and of a large section of the population in the rest of Europe, and in places as far away as New Zealand, that gives real cause for alarm. No fewer than 20 newspapers in these countries decided to reprint the cartoons. Many did so with an ill-concealed glee, saying that the cartoons were a part of the story and that they needed to show their readers what all the to-do was about.

Worse, a number of newspapers have ganged together to commission more such cartoons. While all are claiming that their motive is to assert the freedom of the media and resist bullying by organised Islamic groups backed by the threat of terror, the real purpose is to remind the Muslims that they are living in European countries with a rational civilisation rooted in Christianity, and that if they did not like it, they could always go back where they came from.

No one will deny that there is something deeply repugnant in the way various Sunni and Shia clerics have issued fatwas against eminent writers like Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen. But the cartoons seem to have ripped the top off a festering sore in the psyche of the Europeans. Four months after the crisis erupted, an opinion poll showed that 57 per cent of the people of Denmark considered what Jyllands Posten had done to be right.

The spasm of anti-Islamic sentiment has increased the potential for conflict in an already deeply troubled world. It has unified Christian fundamentalists and neo-conservatives in America with the growing right wing in Europe. Perhaps more dangerously, it has also submerged differences between Sunnis, Shias and other sects in the Muslim world. It isn't surprising then that the media has rediscovered Samuel Huntington's thesis about an impending 'clash of civilisations'.

In the past, the disappearance of diversity, in this case of the political and religious kind, has usually been a prelude to conflict. That possibility cannot be ruled out now. Europe and the world as a whole seem to be headed for still deeper and more prolonged violence and disorder. The reason for this is not however some irreconcilable clash of civilisations. It's the chaos that's been unleashed upon humanity by that much discussed but little understood phenomenon called globalisation.

The unification of markets, and of manufacture, across national boundaries, and the flight of capital from the high wage to the low wage, newly industrialised countries, has been systematically undermining the base not only of prosperity but also of economic security in the industrialised countries. In Europe, this has resulted in stagnating middle class and professional incomes, weakening trade unions, declining job security and unemployment rates of 9 to 12 per cent, for most of the last three decades. Till quite recently, most people believed that their difficulties were transitional and that a better future lay ahead for all of them. But this belief has evaporated quite suddenly in the past three or four years. Today, more and more people in Europe have lost faith in their leaders. This was reflected in a sharp rise in the strength of the Far Right in recent years and the French rejection of the EU constitution last summer.

When people are hurt and see no reprieve in the future, they tend to look for scapegoats. Hence the sudden eruption of anti-Islamic (as distinct from anti-terrorist) sentiment. But Muslim immigrants are hurting too. Their children have moved away from them but are being rejected in their adopted cultures; one in three cannot find a job. This is an explosive mixture. Pouring scorn and venom on them, instead of sympathy, is akin to lighting a fuse.