I don't really want to get involved in this debate, but I did want to make a couple observations, so...

I think Reuters has done a very good job of covering this situation (well, any news for that matter). I wanted to point out this article , a small portion of which I've quoted for you:

Another blogger calling himself "The Religious Policeman" said the government wanted to divert attention from the deaths of over 436 pilgrims in January during the haj pilgrimage.

The tragedies of a hostel collapse and overcrowding sparked rare domestic criticism of Saudi organization of the haj.

"In order to divert public attention from the regrettable demise of a small number of pilgrims, Saudi newspapers ... revive the four-month-old story of cartoons about the Prophet (peace be upon him) in a Danish newspaper," the blogger wrote.

"So far this has worked reasonably well, although major Danish exports are bacon and lager beer, which we do not import, except as 'special consignments' for some members of your family," he wrote, in a sarcastic letter to King Abdullah.

"What I fail to understand is that for an issue that has been simmering for many months, why it has suddenly hit boiling point," wrote another calling himself "Opinionated Voice."

"It is absurd that we are now known to become more outraged over these cartoons than we do over poverty, occupation, terrorism, war and oppression."
The two important things from this are that the cartoons did not spark immediate protests. The protests began happening -four- months later. What makes you decide four months after something that, dammit you really are angry and you need to show everyone!

Secondly, the last sentence in there underscores the issue we're seeing even in this thread. All we, the West, see of Muslims is hate-mongerers, terrorists, chaos, and corrupt governments. Blame that on the media if you will - it's partially true - but they're not completely to blame. Muslims, whether extremist or not, have played a large role in creating this image. One Reuters journalist noted that (though I was unable to find the article again) it is kind of hard to report on something good when there was yet another bombing.

In a way, I can see how these cartoons were created. It is a reflection upon the image the West sees of Muslims. What has struck me as curious the entire time is that Muslims aren't more angry that they've created a bad image of themselves, one that would generate such negative cartoons, rather than the fact that these were published.