From Gaza to Jakarta, Muslim anger over the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed published in certain European newspapers has led to a horrifying series of riots, demonstrations and assaults on westerners. For many Muslims, these images, first published in a Danish newspaper, struck a raw nerve. There is a religious prohibition on depicting the founder of the Islamic faith. And the religious offense is compounded by the widely held conviction that these cartoons are yet another attempt by westerners to stigmatize and destroy Islam.

As we have spent most of our history as a vulnerable minority, Jews can, on one level, empathize with those Muslims who feel insulted by the cartoons. It goes without saying that crude or stereotypical caricatures of our most sacred religious beliefs could lead us to react. Indeed, the medium of the caricature has been one of anti-Semitism's deadliest weapons: think of the French press during the Dreyfus Trial, or the German press under the Nazi regime.
 
That is why Jews both value and insist upon multi-cultural societies where the rule of law prevails, where distinctive identities can flourish and where tolerance and respect are values equally applicable to all citizens. We benefit from such an arrangement and so do other religious, racial and ethnic groups. That is why we ask that Muslim sensitivities about their basic tenets of their faith are respected by the media and by governments.

But how does that translate practically? Given the vitriolic character of the protests, the leaders of both Muslim countries and Muslim minority communities must recognize that coercion and censorship are not the answer. A situation where newspaper editors, because they dare to criticize a set of beliefs, are fearful of losing their jobs or even their lives, is profoundly unhealthy. More generally, violent protests serve to reinforce the stereotypes about fanaticism which a multicultural society needs to overcome.

Three lessons can therefore be disentangled from the melee. The first is that democratic societies which tolerate an abundance of controversial, provocative images need to reflect on the impact of such images and the words which accompany them. In democracies, the beauty of free speech is that it carries a responsibility as well as an entitlement. Sometimes, it is right and prudent to draw back, in order to avoid offending the precious beliefs of the various communities which compose our societies. To recognize, in other words, the boundary between legitimate critique and gratuitous slurs.

This is a lesson which the Muslim world needs to absorb as well. For years, newspapers and broadcasters in the Arab and Islamic countries have fed their audiences a diet of anti-Semitic images, libels and conspiracy theories. Nazi-style cartoons demonizing Jews, along with references to the notorious "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," appear almost every day. Many ordinary Muslims have formed their view of Jews entirely because of such material; they have access to nothing else. Yet protests from western governments and Jewish organizations have encountered indifference, contempt or the devious response that government interference would mean restricting press freedom, even though many of these newspapers and broadcasters are state-owned.

The second lesson is that we need, in the name of religious tolerance, to make clear the distinction between the Muslim faith and Islamist violence. As with any religion, there are multiple interpretations of Islam, of which the jihadi version is only one. If we fail to acknowledge that, not only do we denigrate the Muslims who live among us in peace. We also compromise our own well-established traditions of fairness and rigor. The Islamic world, too, must also respect the beliefs and practises of its numerous non-Muslim minorities; Christians, Buddhists and others.

The third lesson is that violence is not compatible with democratic conversation. This was the case in 1989, when Muslims around the world burned copies of Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses," it was the case in 2004, when the Dutch controversialist Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered by an Islamist activist, and it remains the case now. We should refuse to be intimidated by Islamist clerics like Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi when they issue calls for a "day of anger."

Anger is not the answer. Reason and persuasion are. Indeed, in an unstable world where traditional identities merge and clash, they are our only hope.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.