Source: The New York Times

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70915FD395A0C708DDDAB0894DE404482

On February 13, 2006 The New York Times reported, "As the crisis over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad flared over the last two weeks, leaders of several American Muslim groups began working quietly to try to mediate between European Muslims and the West. The leaders -- representing three national organizations and two mosques -- say they share the outrage over the cartoons felt by Muslims in countries where riots have turned bloody and Danish embassies have been burned. Yet in phone calls to Muslim leaders in Europe and in interviews with media outlets in the Middle East like Al Jazeera, they have offered a consistent message to Muslims: you must stop the violence because the Prophet Muhammad would never have approved, and you are playing into the stereotype of Muslims as barbarians.At the same time, in meetings at the Washington embassies of European nations, the American Muslim leaders have presented their concerns to foreign diplomats: we, too, value free speech, but your governments should condemn the cartoons as hateful and bigoted and work at better integrating your alienated Muslim minorities. 'The reason that Muslims in America have not responded the way they have in Europe is that we have come to know that so many people here speak out against such bigotries, and so many newspapers have not published the cartoons,' said Mohamed Magid, the imam and executive director of a large mosque in Virginia, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, who was among a group of Muslim leaders who met with the ambassador of Denmark, Friis Arne Petersen, last week in Washington. The American Muslim leaders are holding up their approach to living in a Western nation as a model."