Posted on 02/05/2006 12:55:24 PM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
When the Ayatollah called for the execution of Salman Rushdie upon publication of The Satanic Verses, only a few commentators - most notably John le Carré - said Rushdie brought the whole thing on himself by creating a work of art which he should have known would offend Muslims. This time around, a disturbing number of people who should know better are siding with the rampaging mob, like Simon Jenkins in The Times (column title: "These cartoons don't defend free speech, they threaten it").
Nobody has an absolute right to freedom. Civilisation is the story of humans sacrificing freedom so as to live together in harmony. We do not need Hobbes to tell us that absolute freedom is for newborn savages. All else is compromise.
Should a right-wing Danish newspaper have carried the derisive images of Muhammad? No. Should other newspapers have repeated them and the BBC teasingly “flashed” them to prove its free-speech virility? No. Should governments apologise for them or ban them from repeating the offence? No, but that is not the issue.
A newspaper is not a monastery, its mind blind to the world and deaf to reaction. Every inch of published print reflects the views of its writers and the judgment of its editors. Every day newspapers decide on the balance of boldness, offence, taste, discretion and recklessness. They must decide who is to be allowed a voice and who not. They are curbed by libel laws, common decency and their own sense of what is acceptable to readers. Speech is free only on a mountain top; all else is editing.
Despite Britons’ robust attitude to religion, no newspaper would let a cartoonist depict Jesus Christ dropping cluster bombs, or lampoon the Holocaust.
I'm hearing this argument - that only Muslims are fair game for criticism, and that editorial cartoonists never, ever savage Christianity or Judaism - a lot, and the sheer ignorance of it never ceases to amaze me. I'm not sure what kind of cartoons get published in The Times, but The Guardian had no qualms about publishing this masterpiece from cartoonist/maniac Steve Bell:
When Bell is off barking at the moon, or whatever else he does in his free time, the Guardian employs the services of Martin Rowson, who gave us the masterpiece shown below. Note that Bush, Condi and Rumsfeld the Vampire are wearing Nazi armbands, except that they have crosses on them instead of swastikas! Because Christianity=Nazism=the Bush Administration, get it?
Not to be outdone, The Independent dusted off one of the most pervasive anti-semitic stereotypes - that Jews suck the blood of children - for this award-winning cartoon:
Most Christians and Jews consider the above cartoons, and countless others regularly printed in the Western media, grossly offensive - at least as offensive as the Muhammed cartoons are to Muslims. But the newspapers in questions were not afraid to publish them, nor should they have been. We cannot use the lowest-common-denominator principle in determining what is acceptable for public discourse, gradually adding more and more exceptions to the right of free expression until we're sure nobody is offended.
Any newspaper which will not run the Mohammed cartoons, out of a newfound sensitivity to readers' religious beliefs, is being cowardly and hypocritical. And commentators who place all the blame on the cartoonists, not the thugs and lunatics threatening them with execution, have no idea what freedom of expression really means.
Ping
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