It seems to me that the images in question are considered/claimed to be important *only because* there are protests against them. This is a circular logic ... the more people protest, the more the "keeper"s of the image insist they must be retained in the article.
I think we need to disregard both the "protesters" and "keepers" and rather look at the scholarly importance/notability of the images. That should be the only criterion for inclusion or exclusion, rather than what any Muslim or Westerner thinks about the pictures. Retaining the images just because "Muslims want to censor it, so let's keep them" is wrong, and equally wrong would be removing them because "(some) Muslims don't like the images". If the images have been considered important/relevant in academic circles, only then they should be included. In other words, let's apply something similar to [[WP:N]] in this issue, rather than [[WP:IDONTLIKEIT]] or [[WP:ILIKEIT]].
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Ragib