With respect, I think the background information you provide is interesting and topical but not directly relevant. Whether and how groups of Muslims are offended is not at issue - it is clear that some are, and that removing the images is the way to solve their dissatisfaction. Of course there are many ways of removing or obscuring the images - we could even have a link to a subpage only of images and descriptions, separated from the main body of the article. The question we have not answered is still the most important question: Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience? My answer would be no. If there are other, editorial reasons for removing the content - fine. Even if the proposed reason was that not having the images, or having blank images, was more educational and provided a stronger message than the images themselves - fine. That isn't what is proposed, however, and editorial concerns are not the reason. Until that changes, a compromise seems unlikely.
Nathan