The insanity over the cartoon drawings of the prophet Muhammad, originally published in a Danish newspaper, show no sign of abating though god-only-knows how many words have been so far spent debating the issue. A few points to make my viewpoint clear:
To say, as has been repeated ad nauseum since this controversy began, that freedom of speech is not the freedom to offend or insult is completely, totally and maddeningly wrong. It gets things, in fact, completely backwards. Freedom of speech does not exist without the freedom to insult and offend. It seems almost too obvious to have to point out, but to tolerate only those opinions and expressions that you agree with is to make the right to freedom of speech completely meaningless. There is, and there should not be, any right to not be offended in a democratic country. Yes, there are restrictions on the right to free speech in many free countries (in my own, Canada, it is "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"), but hardly can this case be an example of a justifiable restriction. Holocaust denial and blatant anti-Semitism are the most common examples of limitations on free speech, but the difference between those cases and the publication of these cartoons should be obvious enough even though I am admitedly not even completely comfortable with those justifications. In the case of anti-Semitic (meaning, of course, anti-Jewish, though somewhat of a misnomer since Arabs are as semitic as Jews) or other rascist material, the offence is not directed at the beliefs of someone, but rather at their unchangeable identity.
It must be remembered that for Hitler and the Nazis (and those who continue to propagate views similar to theirs to this day), "Jewishness" had nothing to do with believing in Judaism, but was a racial signifier that could not be escaped by simply converting to Christianity. To even have a sole jewish grandparent meant one was "tainted" and was considered enough justification to end up in the gas chambers, though this managed to be avoided by many of those with mixed ancestry. To be a Muslim, however, is not an unchangeable identity (even though according to the Koran, and many Muslims today, the punishment for apostasy from Islam is death), but a religious set of beliefs that deserves no special respect as compared to any other set of beliefs. To back down in the face of the violent intimidation that has so far been propagated is to give up on this such important right.
Here is Charles Krauthammer's take with which I couldn't agree more:
As much of the Islamic world erupts in a studied frenzy over the Danish Muhammad cartoons, there are voices of reason being heard on both sides. Some Islamic leaders and organizations, while endorsing the demonstrators' sense of grievance and sharing their outrage, speak out against using violence as a vehicle of expression. Their Western counterparts -- intellectuals, including most of the major newspapers in the United States -- are similarly balanced: While, of course, endorsing the principle of free expression, they criticize the Danish newspaper for abusing that right by publishing offensive cartoons, and they declare themselves opposed, in the name of religious sensitivity, to doing the same.
God save us from the voices of reason.
What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity.
Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?
...
There is a "sensitivity" argument for not having published the cartoons in the first place, back in September when they first appeared in that Danish newspaper. But it is not September. It is February. The cartoons have been published, and the newspaper, the publishers and Denmark itself have come under savage attack. After multiple arsons, devastating boycotts, and threats to cut off hands and heads, the issue is no longer news value, i.e., whether a newspaper needs to publish them to inform the audience about what is going on. The issue now is solidarity.
The mob is trying to dictate to Western newspapers, indeed Western governments, what is a legitimate subject for discussion and caricature. The cartoons do not begin to approach the artistic level of Salman Rushdie's prose, but that's not the point. The point is who decides what can be said and what can be drawn within the precincts of what we quaintly think of as the free world.
The mob has turned this into a test case for freedom of speech in the West. The German, French and Italian newspapers that republished these cartoons did so not to inform but to defy -- to declare that they will not be intimidated by the mob.
Read the whole thing at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020901434.html
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