The Guardian leader:
The right to freedom of speech which allows newspapers to publish such
provocative cartoons has been hard won, is inextricably essential to
liberty, must be robustly defended and has sometimes to be
controversially asserted. If free speech is to be meaningful, moreover,
the right to it cannot shirk from embracing views that a majority – or
a minority – finds distasteful, even on occasions bitterly so. All
those considerations point towards a case for wider publication of
cartoons which, even though offensive and provocative, say something
about uncomfortable issues that are central to the modern world and
have triggered an anguished debate in Europe and elsewhere.
Quite, spot on. Ah, but:
Context matters very much in the case of the cartoons of Muhammad too.
It is one thing to assert the right to publish an image of the prophet.
As long as that is not illegal – and not even the government’s amended
religious hatred bill makes it so – then that right undoubtedly exists.
But it is another thing to put that right to the test, especially when
to do so inevitably causes offence to many Muslims and, even more so,
when there is currently such a powerful need to craft a more inclusive
public culture which can embrace them and their faith. That is why the
defiant republication of the cartoons in some parts of Europe (some of
them with far less good histories of intercommunal relations than this
country) is more questionable than it may appear at first sight. That
is also why the restraint of most of the British press may be the wiser
course – at least for now. There has to be a very good reason for
giving gratuitous offence of this kind. Yesterday’s acquittal of two
British National party officials on race hatred charges for attacking
Islam – and the triumphalist scenes as the two freed men emerged from
court – are part of the context that must be weighed in asserting any
right to publish cartoons that offend Muslims. So too is the political
situation in Denmark itself, where the cartoons were first published,
and where a large and strongly anti-immigrant party provides part of
the parliamentary coalition supporting Denmark’s centre-right
government.
As Polly said, it’s self-censorship, the wave that comes before the intricacies of the law, that is the real problem.
Leave a Reply