Idea Review

(Photo courtesy of the BBC news website)

Recently several newspapers in Europe published cartoons that criticized the prophet Muhammad. Islam prohibits depictions of the Prophet. These papers have been accused of blasphemy and incitement to violence. Such accusations may well be true, but it’s unclear whether that makes the publishers guilty of anything. As several papers have indicated in their editorials, blasphemy in their view is not a crime.

Indeed, one could argue that blasphemy is a responsibilty for any democratic society. As we’ve seen in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood and in Palestine with Hamas, Islamic parties are increasingly finding power through the ballot-box. Whether their ultimate aim is to preserve democracy or not is impossible to guess, but there is little doubt that no country can claim to be free or democratically governed by its people unless it allows blasphemy. Religion historically, but today especially, has always thrived on intolerance. Democracy and religion thus exist more or less at cross purposes. Still, many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere are claiming to be democracies while also officially sanctioning intolerance. The calls of such countries for an apology from the papers betrays their totalitarian tendencies. As the Prime Minister of Denmark said when several countries in the Middle East called for an official apology, “I can’t call a newspaper and tell them what to put in it. That’s not how our society works.” Sadly, however, in some of those countries, that is how society works.

This brings me to the second accusation–the incitement to violence. It is true that in the United States and much of the west “hate speech” is not protected. When the sole aim of one’s speaking is incitement, when free speech becomes invidious, then the balance between what is fair and what is right disappears. When free speech violates civil rights then and only then is its restriction permissible in a democratic society—note that I said “permissible,” not mandated or required in any way. Ideally, democratic societies should be strong enough to endure the free exchange of ideas whatever their content. Those who promote hate speech should not be silenced by law but shamed by their societies. Better still, they and all of us, could learn how to express our opinions in a less offensive way.

Could the Muhammad cartoons be considered hate speech? Unlikely. If the scrawny kid on the playground hurls insults at the bully it is not hate speech. Such invective may be foolish but could never be considered immoral. Islam, to put it mildly, is now a bully. Muslims will respond, with great justice, that the West too is a bully. True, the sympathy towards Israel of most Western governments cannot be doubted. But Middle Eastern governments (and tragically many Western muslims as well) fail to see that the western media are NOT organs of their governments; we are not propaganda machines, despite what the Bush administration may desire. Media represent the very essence of freedom in the West—the right to criticize and through criticism, to bring about improvement. So indeed, the call by Islamist governments in the Middle East to stop the criticism is in fact the best sign of why such criticism should continue; they are calling out, begging for criticism. And for any of us to succumb to such threats is to submit to totalitarianism and to yield to tyranny.

See further discussion about this idea here.