Thinking about the news reports, I honestly don't think the secular governments of Syria and Lebanon (especially the latter as it has a weaker grip) could control the mobs involved without actually killing some protesters. Damned if you do, dambed if you don't. It is these kinds of situations where oppresive regimes (such as Syria's) can have their ultimate weakness and illegitimacy exposed. It might be a revolutionary moment. In the case of Lebanon there are reports that 10,000 people were involved in the protest around the Danish consulate, and that water cannons and tear gas were unable to contain the mob.

Knight Ridder: At least 30 injured in protest as outrage over cartoons spreads

In Damascus, Syrians burned a building that houses the Danish, Swedish and Chilean embassies after receiving text messages calling on them to defend their prophet. The crowds were stopped en route to the French embassy.

"I don't like that it resulted in a fire - that's not a part of our religion and our prophet. But we also have to admit to the fact that we are under so much pressure," said Fouad Tarabeine, a Syrian businessman. "The political situation, the pressure we have from the state. So, this was a kind of release. This was the straw that broke the camel's back."

The violence in Beirut started when thousands of Muslims gathered near the Danish embassy, which is located in the Christian area of Ashrafieh. A small group of demonstrators pushed through cordons and set fire to the embassy, overturned cars and broke the windows of a Maronite Catholic church. Lebanese forces used tear gas and water cannons to beat back the crowds.

The event quickly took on ugly sectarian undertones in a capital still scarred by Lebanon's bloody, 15-year civil war. Unknown Christian militants sent text messages to cell phones that read, "Launch the Christian nation of Lebanon. It is never going to end unless you prepare your weapons." Muslims, meanwhile, rolled out their prayer carpets on the streets of the mostly Christian neighborhood in an act viewed as a provocation.

"There were infiltrators among the demonstrators who do not express the opinions of the thousands of Muslims who participated in the peaceful protest to slam the Danish cartoons," said Asaad Harmoush, the head of an Islamic group that organized the demonstration in Beirut.

The Lebanese government called an emergency cabinet meeting Sunday night, while both Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders condemned the violence. Senior Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah issued a religious order banning flag burnings and attacks on embassies, and urged Muslims to show their outrage by joining the boycott of Danish exports.

"They are free to print what they want to print, but we are also free to believe what we want to believe," said Khaled Mustafa, an Egyptian pursuing his doctorate at a university in Belgium, where a petition circulated against the cartoons. "Now is not the time for something like this. The media is already focused on the troubles of the Muslim world. All we see on TV is Iraq and Palestine. I don't feel we need this kind of trouble now."

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman