A bit of a side note, but from what I've read/heard from Muslims, what they object to isn't the drawing of Mohammed per se, but the mocking of Mohammed. I've also heard some express annoyance that the media would misrepresent their view as if the problem was a religious edict against drawing Mohammed and not the mocking

Empirically this isn't the case. See e.g.the initial cartoon for Everyone Draw Muhammad day which resulted in the artist having to go into hiding from the death threats.

Also if you look at the relevant Wikipedia talk pages, there are almost daily Muslims showing up demanding that we remove all pictures of Muhammad. In another instance, at one college, the Muslim students were sufficiently offended by smiling stick figures labeled Muhammad that they added "Ali" after each so they would instead say they were Muhammad Ali. There might be some moderates claiming to only be offended by mockery, but it seems pretty clear that there are a lot of Muslims who are offended by any attempted depiction.