Cartoon Violence
We've been enduring some more debate about "freedom of speech" recently; and as usual it stands on shaky ground, advocated unthinkingly by the blasé or in bad faith by the malevolent.
I have long been of the opinion that freedom of speech is not an inaliable right; indeed it is not enshrined by European countries in the same way as it is in the US constitution. You should earn your right to express your opinion. What gives anyone the right to spout any old bollocks? Or to libel someone? There should be a degree of self censorship, a sense of responsibility that we take to inform ourselves before we opine.
This means that if we say something malicious, we may be punished, just as the BNP tossers should be for their racist claptrap. Here they took time to gloss the Coran and foment prejudice, willfully and spitefully. But because we're so used to people reiterating nonsense on our TV screens everyday -- I'm not just looking at Fox here -- under the banner that they are allowed to express themselves, which juror who holds sympathy with some elements of BNP fallacies on multiculturalism and who sees a need for debate is going to convict these deeply spiteful and dishonest people?
But I didn't even want to talk about them; I wanted to talk about cartoons.
If ever there was one area of expression that needed to be informed, it was satire. What's the use of mocking someone's behaviour if it's so wide of the mark as to be unrecognisable? Unfortunately, the cartoons printed in Danish and French newspapers showing Mohammed as a bomber draw some resonance with their audience. They are more or less funny and more or less offensive. And so we have on the one hand police pulling aside young Asian men at Euston under an obscene prevention of terrorism act, and on the other Egyptians who fear that they can't travel to the UK because they are Muslim.
I digress, since my point is how the editors who publish these cartoons stake a claim to be allowed to do so. If we see cartoons in European papers mocking Jesus, we know people take offence, but we live in a suitably liberal society that most Christians recognise their way of life may be mocked and there is value in it. Many Muslims protesting about these cartoons do not live in such a liberal society and moreover do not wish to live in one. Their values should not be allowed to impose on our own society's values however.
If you see an inconsistency in this response to two arguments for freedom of speech, one for the BNP and one for the Danish press, look again. The former is indefensible because it impinges upon the way we should live our lives in tolerance; the latter is defensible because the reaction is based on intolerance. This is not to say that I agree with the cartoons themselves; one of the issues that Europeans have to face in this kind of religious satire is that when they mock Christianity, they mock a culture to which they themselves belong; they can argue that they're laughing with Christians. When they mock Islam, they are laughing at someone else.
Generally, my response to the cartoon is as such: the Danish paper should have been allowed to publish the cartoon but shouldn't have felt the need to; this was exacerbated in the case of France Soir which was well within its rights to publish, and there was no excuse for the owners to sack the editor; the reaction in some parts of the Muslim world has been wholly and unjustifiably racist against Danish society in general.
In summary, the whole episode simply reflects human stupidity. Can a cartoon really provoke such a violent response? When will these stubborn people from all parties recognise that they have to live with each others differences? There's ample scope for satire in that subject matter.
You can find some excellent comment and cartoons on Cagle's Web Log.
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