Don’t look now, but backbones seem to be springing up all over Europe: Germans print Muhammad caricatures. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

Two German newspapers on Wednesday reproduced controversial drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad, with one of them arguing that a “right to blasphemy” was anchored in democratic freedoms.

The drawings were among several published in a Danish paper in September that sparked outrage and boycotts in Islamic countries. The pictures were also shown in a Norwegian magazine last week. ...

But the German Welt daily put one of the drawings showing the prophet’s turban transformed into a bomb on its front page on Wednesday. It said the picture was “harmless” and expressed regret that the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily had apologized for causing offense.

“Democracy is the institutionalized form of freedom of expression,” the paper said in a front-page commentary. “There is no right to protection from satire in the West; there is a right to blasphemy.”

The Berliner Zeitung daily also printed two of the caricatures as part of its coverage of the controversy.

Italy and Spain too:

Newspapers across Europe have reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to show support for a Danish paper whose cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage.

France Soir, Germany’s Die Welt, La Stampa in Italy and El Periodico in Spain all carried some of the drawings.