Free Speech Dilemma - Clarification Sought

Mr Spoon | 06.02.2006 15:34 | Analysis | Anti-racism | World

I'm confused and in need of help - please see below.

Dear fellow sufferers

Am I missing something? When a Dutch paper prints a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed with a bomb for a head, politicians and commentators fall over each other quoting Voltaire and celebrating our wonderful commitment to unrestrained free speech - the right to offend, upset, attack.

Yet when large numbers of Muslims come out onto the streets protesting, the same commentators seem to have temporarily suspended their absolute belief in free speech - the protesters, it seems, are criminals who need locking up for offending our western values!

I was already grappling with the legal principle that means Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri can be banged up and/or deported for allegedly inciting violence, yet BNP Fuhrer Nick Griffin walks free from court for doing the same.

I'm a Philosophy graduate and I'm baffled. Can anyone suggest to me what the missing factor is? It can't be race or religion after all, I mean aren't we all so completely confident our western society and values are free from any prejudice?

Yours in hope of some form of coherent answer,

Mr Spoon

Mr Spoon

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

There is a difference

06.02.2006 16:57

I am not a philosophy graduate, but I think you may be disingenious in failing to acknowledge a difference. The cartoon was an expression someone's view about another's ideas and beliefs, offensive to some, and distasteful to many, but just an expression of opinion.

Some of the placards that some demonstrators carried (such as the one calling "butcher those who insult Islam") were something else - they could be seen a clear incitement to murder.

Freedom of expression is about being able to say things that others find offensive or insulting. It also means that what I say should not be dictated to by another, whether he be the pope, Blair, the Ayatolah or some fool who wants me to be butchered because I said something he thinks rude.

Peace (and no butchering please...)

Carlos

Not the same

06.02.2006 17:05

Well, I think there is still quite a big difference between a provocative cartoon and placards calling for violence against those who insult Islam! That is incitment to (a)religious violence ... Don't you think?

Poster

Double Standards? The Plot Thickens

07.02.2006 05:11

Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons
Gwladys Fouché and agencies
Guardian, UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1703552,00.html

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

raghallaigh

Think it through, morons

07.02.2006 12:35

Hmmm, two different sections edited by two different people, three years apart made different editorial decisions. How odd. Then there's the fact that one set of cartoons was commissioned by the paper to make a specific point, while the others were sent to them on spec and rejected.

It's not rocket science, kiddies.

Although let's face it, had the paper run cartoons mocking jesus, nobody on Indymedia would have given a damn.

Coffee Cup

Disingenuous, like a typical leftie...

11.02.2006 00:04

"I was already grappling with the legal principle that means Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri can be banged up and/or deported for allegedly inciting violence, yet BNP Fuhrer Nick Griffin walks free from court for doing the same."

Would you care to list all of Nick Griffin's comments in which he allegedly incited violence?
And then list all of Abu Hamza's? I think Abu Hamza's would take up hundreds if not thousands of pages. I saw him on Newsnight a few days ago, in many separate video recordings, blatantly saying "It's okay to kill infidels", etc.etc.

How many people have the BNP murdered?
None. Zero.

How many people have muslims murdered?

I think that answers your question...

Tom Sawyer