The Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were widely condemned in the Muslim world and led to violent protests, attacks on embassies and even deaths. Even in recent days, they have continued to stir more protest (in Pakistan) and create security problems (in Afghanistan). They have set off a kind of “clash of civilisations” with a Muslim side denouncing them as blasphemy and a western side defending them as freedom of speech. The whole dispute has been extremely polarising.

Now one of the most popular preachers in the Middle East, Egypt’s Amr Khaled, has said there were positive sides to the uproar. The caricatures “were useful for Muslims and the Islamic world” because they prompted Muslims to stand up for the Prophet and for Islam, the television preacher told the German news agency dpa on Monday. The dispute “charged the batteries of Muslim youths, strengthened their faith and got them to stand up actively for their religion.”

Can a controversy that polarises people and leads to death and destruction be “useful” for a religion?

“I have no problems with Muslims. I made a cartoon which was aimed at the terrorists who use an interpretation of Islam as their spiritual dynamite.”

Kurt Westergaard, the Danish artist who drew the “turban bomb” cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad that sparked violent protests across the Muslim world, says he has no regrets about the caricature that changed his life. He lives under death threats that seem to be more than just words; last month, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service arrested three men suspected of planning to kill him. But, as he told our Copenhagen senior correspondent Kim McLaughlin, the cartoons sparked off a debate that Muslims must face if Islam is to integrate into western societies.

Read the whole interview here. Is this the way to view this issue — a turban bomb cartoon against the “spritual dynamite” of radical Islamism?