Twelve cartoons that were first published by a Danish newspaper in September 2005 have sparked angry protests in the Middle East in the past few days.
One cartoon showed Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban. In another Mohammed is shown warning dead suicide bombers that there are no virgins left in heaven.
Islam considers any image of the prophet blasphemous.
Several other European newspapers reprinted the cartoons this week, including the French daily France-Soir, Germany's Die Welt, Italy's Corriere della Serra and La Stampa, and Spain's Catalan daily El Periodico, either in solidarity with the Danes or in news coverage.
Anger vented
In the Gaza Strip and the Iraqi capital Baghdad protesters shouted anti-Danish slogans, burned Danish flags and called for a boycott of Danish products.
Other Muslim countries have recalled ambassadors and threats of violence have been issued against Scandinavians in Muslim countries.
Danish troops serving in Iraq are reportedly the object of a fatwa, or legal Islamic ruling.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has repeatedly refused to apologise for the paper's publication of the cartoons, saying it goes against press freedom.
He has however apologised if Muslims were offended, and said his government would launch a "media offensive" in Muslim nations.
"We have to recognize that this is not only an issue between Denmark and a series of Arab governments. This is very much something that has spread to the streets in Arab countries," he said.
Condemnation
Indonesia and Malaysia on Wednesday joined the chorus of protest.
"This insult against a religious symbol revered by other communities demonstrates their foolishness and stupidity," declared Ichwan Sam, secretary-general of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Scholars, the country's highest authority on Islam.
Indonesia's government also weighed in, criticising those who defended the cartoons' publication.
"Freedom of expression cannot justify indignity towards a religion," said foreign ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin.
In Malaysia, the influential Muslim Consumers Association demanded action.
"We want the Malaysian government, our prime minister, to send a protest to Denmark," the group's project coordinator, Noor Nirwandy Noordin, said
"It is necessary for (Denmark) to apologise to every Muslim country in the world. If they don't deal with this accordingly, they may face a boycott of their products in every Arabic and Muslim country," he warned.
Syria and Saudi Arabia have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark, while Libya closed its embassy in the Danish capital.
In Russia, the Orthodox church and the Mufti Council condemned those European newspapers which republished the cartoons.
"It's very dangerous to insult religious feelings, in so far as they are exceptionally deeply anchored in the human soul," said Mikhail Dudko, spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate, according to the ITAR-TASS news agency.
The Mufti Council, one of the major bodies representing Russia's 23 million Muslims, also condemned the newspapers.
Among others to voice their object was Chechen guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev, the man behind the bloody hostage-taking at a school in the Russian town of Beslan in 2004.
"The commander Basayev has condemned the derogatory cartoons of Prophet Mohammed ... which are an insult to Muslims worldwide," said the statement posted on a website.
"We must use this occasion to defend our prophet, Islam and Muslims," added the statement.
In Paris, the head of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Robert Menard, told news agency AFP he was "extremely worried by the reaction of Arab regimes, which betrays a lack of understanding of the nature of press freedom."
This covers "the publication of information that is shocking for the population. The European Court of Human Rights says so. It is an essential accomplishment of democracy," he argued.
Bomb threat
Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which first published the cartoons said its offices in the central town of Aarhus were evacuated on Wednesday after a bomb threat.
"A man stated in broken English that a bomb would explode at
Jyllands-Posten in Aarhus within an hour," the paper reported.
The paper's offices in downtown Copenhagen, which it shares with the Ritzau news agency, were also briefly evacuated.