Joe Duffy hosted a great old rant on the subject of cartoons about Mohammad yesterday on RTE Radio One. However I came across a similar rant from the US Senate some time ago:
“I do not blame people for being outraged and angered, and they should be angered at us, unless we do something to change this. If this continues and if this goes unrectified, where will it end? They will say, "This is free speech." Well, if you want free speech, you want to draw dirty pictures, you want to do anything you want, that is your business, but not with taxpayers' money.” That was Senator Alfonse d’Amato speaking about the artist Andres Serrano’s work entitled “Piss Christ” back in 1989. Incidentally ‘Serrano’ draws a blank today from the search engine on the US National Endowment of the Arts website today.
Closer to home, no doubt Frank Duff and the League of Decency would have got annoyed by such things in their day. Burning down embassies brings things to another level, but feelings run high when you feel that your country or religion is under attack, as Jim Tunney pointed out after the Burning of the British Embassy in Dublin subsequent to Bloody Sunday back in 1972. I can only imagine that the militants now attacking Danish embassies are venting their rage against the occupation of Iraq, and the civilian deaths that have occurred.
We should be careful not to be smug about democratic freedoms here, or elsewhere in Europe. It’s not that long ago when women had to wear the mantilla in order to receive communion in the Catholic Church. I don’t think the Mohammad cartoons should have been published, simply out of respect for a religion that sees it as blasphemous to depict a likeness of the prophet. Interesting to see that the Jyllands-Posten had previously declined to publish some Jesus cartoons as they might have offended some readers. In the end it comes down to respect. You might not agree with someone’s views, but perhaps respect is needed in order to engage with an opposing view. Cooling down the argument can lead to dialogue and informed debate.
Oh, and the illustration: It is an extract from the 4th prize winner's entry in the Kids Council Arts Competition run by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. It’s a drawing by Abdul Hadi of the Muslim National School, Roebuck Road, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.
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Don't quite agree Ciaran. Here's a proper liberal perspective from the Economist magazine. Then again wouldn't expect a liberal opinion from a Green...anyway here it is.....The limits to free speech
Cartoon wars
Feb 9th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Free speech should override religious sensitivities. And it is not just the property of the West
AFP
“I DISAGREE with what you say and even if you are threatened with death I will not defend very strongly your right to say it.” That, with apologies to Voltaire, seems to have been the initial pathetic response of some western governments to the republication by many European newspapers of several cartoons of Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper in September. When the republished cartoons stirred Muslim violence across the world, Britain and America took fright. It was “unacceptable” to incite religious hatred by publishing such pictures, said America's State Department. Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, called their publication unnecessary, insensitive, disrespectful and wrong.
Really? There is no question that these cartoons are offensive to many Muslims (see article). They offend against a convention in Islam that the Prophet should not be depicted. And they offend because they can be read as equating Islam with terrorism: one cartoon has Muhammad with a bomb for his headgear. It is not a good idea for newspapers to insult people's religious or any other beliefs just for the sake of it. But that is and should be their own decision, not a decision for governments, clerics or other self-appointed arbiters of taste and responsibility. In a free country people should be free to publish whatever they want within the limits set by law.
No country permits completely free speech. Typically, it is limited by prohibitions against libel, defamation, obscenity, judicial or parliamentary privilege and what have you. In seven European countries it is illegal to say that Hitler did not murder millions of Jews. Britain still has a pretty dormant blasphemy law (the Christian God only) on its statute books. Drawing the line requires fine judgements by both lawmakers and juries. Britain, for example, has just jailed a notorious imam, Abu Hamza of London's Finsbury Park mosque, for using language a jury construed as solicitation to murder (see article). Last week, however, another British jury acquitted Nick Griffin, a notorious bigot who calls Islam “vicious and wicked”, on charges of stirring racial hatred.
Drawing the line
In this newspaper's view, the fewer constraints that are placed on free speech the better. Limits designed to protect people (from libel and murder, for example) are easier to justify than those that aim in some way to control thinking (such as laws on blasphemy, obscenity and Holocaust-denial). Denying the Holocaust should certainly not be outlawed: far better to let those who deny well-documented facts expose themselves to ridicule than pose as martyrs. But the Muhammad cartoons were lawful in all the European countries where they were published. And when western newspapers lawfully publish words or pictures that cause offence—be they ever so unnecessary, insensitive or disrespectful—western governments should think very carefully before denouncing them.
Freedom of expression, including the freedom to poke fun at religion, is not just a hard-won human right but the defining freedom of liberal societies. When such a freedom comes under threat of violence, the job of governments should be to defend it without reservation. To their credit, many politicians in continental Europe have done just that. France's interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said rather magnificently that he preferred “an excess of caricature to an excess of censorship”—though President Jacques Chirac later spoiled the effect by condemning the cartoons as a “manifest provocation”.
Shouldn't the right to free speech be tempered by a sense of responsibility? Of course. Most people do not go about insulting their fellows just because they have a right to. The media ought to show special sensitivity when the things they say might stir up hatred or hurt the feelings of vulnerable minorities. But sensitivity cannot always ordain silence. Protecting free expression will often require hurting the feelings of individuals or groups, even if this damages social harmony. The Muhammad cartoons may be such a case.
In Britain and America, few newspapers feel that their freedoms are at risk. But on the European mainland, some of the papers that published the cartoons say they did so precisely because their right to publish was being called into question. In the Netherlands two years ago a film maker was murdered for daring to criticise Islam. Danish journalists have received death threats. In a climate in which political correctness has morphed into fear of physical attack, showing solidarity may well be the responsible thing for a free press to do. And the decision, of course, must lie with the press, not governments.
It's good to talk
It is no coincidence that the feeblest response to the outpouring of Muslim rage has come from Britain and America. Having sent their armies rampaging into the Muslim heartland, planting their flags in Afghanistan and Iraq and putting Saddam Hussein on trial, George Bush and Tony Blair have some making up to do with Muslims. Long before making a drama out of the Danish cartoons, a great many Muslims had come to equate the war on terrorism with a war against Islam. This is an equation Osama bin Laden and other enemies of the West would like very much to encourage and exploit. In circumstances in which embassies are being torched, isn't denouncing the cartoons the least the West can do to show its respect for Islam, and to stave off a much-feared clash of civilisations?
No. There are many things western countries could usefully say and do to ease relations with Islam, but shutting up their own newspapers is not one of them. People who feel that they are not free to give voice to their worries about terrorism, globalisation or the encroachment of new cultures or religions will not love their neighbours any better. If anything, the opposite is the case: people need to let off steam. And freedom of expression, remember, is not just a pillar of western democracy, as sacred in its own way as Muhammad is to pious Muslims. It is also a freedom that millions of Muslims have come to enjoy or to aspire to themselves. Ultimately, spreading and strengthening it may be one of the best hopes for avoiding the incomprehension that can lead civilisations into conflict.
Interesting link showing the reactions in different countries. I think we should be expressing solidarity with Denmark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the_Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
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