Defend to the death your right to say it

[jere7my]

Today, Ayatollah Khomeni said, regarding the Mohammed cartoons, "The West condemns any denial of the Jewish Holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities." [link]

Look at that again. One of those words doesn't belong.

Got it yet? It's Khomeni's "but." "The West condemns...but it permits." Your conjunction of choice should be "and." There is (or should be) no conflict, in the west, between condemning something and yet permitting it. That's what freedom of speech is all about. I can despise the KKK while defending their right to publish their newsletter; I can mock the antiabortion bozos who wave their fetus-posters without wanting to ban them from the sidewalk. Condemning and permitting go hand in hand here (except when radicals and fundamentalists get involved—don't get me started). But if you fail to grok that lack of conflict, if you live in a country where condemnation naturally leads to censorship, the logical conclusion to draw is, "If the west permits something, then they approve of it." Once you've reached that point, it makes sense that the west would look pretty infuriatingly evil—look at all of the things we endorse! And so the reaction becomes a little more comprehensible (if not forgivable).

(Of course, Khomeni is just turning our arguments back on us—by raising the prospect of making some speech illegal and actionable in this country, we have opened ourselves up to accusations of endorsement. "If you really think X is bad," someone might say, "why isn't it illegal, like you say hate speech (or porn, or what-have-you) should be?" But that's another issue.)

In a new turn, a prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition, saying it wanted to see if freedom of expression—the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings—also applied to Holocaust images. [link]

Of course it does, or I hope it does, and I hope the west's reaction proves me right. Have they never seen South Park? Probably not, actually—which is part of the problem. If they really understood how little respect anyone is afforded in the west, perhaps it would be easier for them to accept that we have the right to mock their prophet, too.

A radical Muslim group in Belgium put on its Web site a cartoon of Adolf Hitler in bed with Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who wrote a wartime diary of hiding from Nazi persecution. [link]

To them I say: good job. You're hitting the wrong target—can't you publish an anti-Dane cartoon, like Stephen Colbert did?—and your motivation is suspect, but at least you're responding in the appropriate vein. You have every right, in my eyes. People may judge you or boycott you, but I sincerely hope they don't threaten to blow you up, or otherwise try to censor you. (And the cartoon is funnier than any of the Mohammed ones.)

You're jumping in on the middle of my thought process, dear reader; this situation has had me pretty worked up all week. I don't think freedom of speech is an American thing, or a western thing—I think it's a fundamental human right, even when people get offended. Tomorrow morning, assuming I can drag myself onto campus, I'm attending a "Chaplain's Noontime Discussion" called The Mohammed Cartoons: Free Speech, Racism or Blasphemy? And, once again, that "or" doesn't belong—it can be all three, without conflict (though I think it's primarily a free speech issue). Perhaps I will learn something there to change my mind; I'll report back, regardless.

Comments

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Heh, I guessed it was "Jewish", since the Holocaust murdered some non-Jews too.

I saw that Anne Frank cartoon and totally didn't get it. I mean, I got that it showed Anne Frank in bed with Hitler, ha ha ha, but what's the white thing towards the top that looks like it might be a speech bubble, but just has a black smudge in it? That confused me.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I figured it was a "black mood" smudge arising from Anne Frank's thoughts. (Hitler had a word bubble, but it actually had words in it.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

He did? Did I somehow miss that? Did I see a different version?

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Maybe yours was expurgated. I saw this one (http://www.ahjur.org/tabsir/frank.jpg).

[franzeska]

I don't think freedom of speech is an American thing, or a western thing—I think it's a fundamental human right, even when people get offended.

How American of you.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Yup. I feel the same way about equality for women.

Sometimes, Americans are just right.

[franzeska]

So we just stamp out cultures that are wrong? (My personal answer tends to be "YES!", but people need to recognize that strong religious beliefs and sexism aren't necessarily incidental to a culture. Remove them, and you may have a more humane culture, but you don't have the same culture.)

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

In this instance, I'm not stamping out Islam; I'm encouraging them to let other cultures exercise their free speech. Whether we should dictate to their culture or not, we certainly shouldn't let them dictate to ours.

[franzeska]

Yes, but objecting to anyone making those drawings is a part of their culture, a rather important part.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

In that case, that's a part of their culture that needs to go. *shrug* That's the only way the world can work. Christianity had to learn that lesson (more or less); Islam needs to, too.

It doesn't make logical sense to tolerate intolerance. What would we do if they decided that all women everywhere had to wear burkhas?

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

To put it in a less inflammatory way, perhaps, their right to preserve their culture's traditions ends at the boundary of my rights.

[franzeska]

Yes, but is it really that simple to determine where that boundary is?

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

No; it's provable that you need to make arbitrary (or divinely inspired) choices in any system of morality. In this case, as I've already stated, I've arbitrarily decided that my right to free speech supercedes their right to prevent me from saying certain things. Under the principle of individual autonomy, I think I have the weight of morality on my side.

Anyway, in this particular case, it's only a small minority of Moslems who oppose all depictions of Mohammed; I don't think giving up their "right" to impose their will on us in this particular way would affect most of them.

[franzeska]

It's a small minority who go around killing people, true. I don't think it's a small minority who object to depictions.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Per the Wikipedia article, "Most contemporary Muslims believe that ordinary portraits and photos, films and illustrations, are permissible. Only some Salafi and Islamist interpretations of Sunni Islam still condemn pictorial representations of any kind. Offensive satirical pictures are a somewhat different case — disrespect to Islam or to Muhammad is still widely considered blasphemous or sacrilegious."

[ursula]

Basic human rights are a historically new and generally controversial idea (see the United States' recent record on UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 5-12, 14, 23, 25, 26, etc.)

There's a strong Muslim tradition that *any* image of Mu{h.}ammad is sacrilegious. It's mildly controversial to make an animated film about his life which doesn't show his face but does show images of the people around him.

[superbacana.livejournal.com]

Muslim demogogues aren't really interested in free speech, they're interested in arousing their audience by pointing out how the West is defiling the most sacred and holy. They would not be impressed by South Park if it blasphemes, no matter how irreverent it is towards American culture.

This is a hot-button issue, inflaming existing animosity. The West hates Islam, the West has done it again. I don't think that calm reasoning is much use in the face of unreasoning anger.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Many Muslim leaders are accusing us of having a double standard about whom it's OK to offend; I think it's important to be able to respond that we don't.

[superbacana.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that some European countries (most notably France and Germany) do have laws against anti-Semitic speech, or hate speech, buying Nazi paraphernelia online, etc. This may be what he's referring to.

(TSOR was not very helpful for this post).

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

For instance: "I have no doubt that no one would think twice about suppressing reprints of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda in American or European papers. Indeed, in June 2003, responding to pressures from several prominent Jewish groups, the Chicago Tribune issued an official apology for printing an offensive cartoon by Dick Locher. It depicted a hook-nosed figure of Ariel Sharon gazing at rows of dollar bills that President Bush is carefully laying down across a bridge called 'MIDEAST GULCH.'" [link (http://www.iranian.com/Ghamari/2006/February/Cartoon/index.html)] That's the sort of accusation I'm talking about, and an illustration of the (apparent) lack of understanding of free speech in the Muslim world. The author here confuses a need to apologize for being offensive with a legal need to suppress offensive materials: he discusses "what expressions ought to be prohibited and what is permissible," and consistently makes no distinction between speech that is offensive and speech that should be suppressed.

[andele.livejournal.com]

A few things:

1) Anti-Semitic speech is illegal in several European countries, and blasphemy is also illegal in some European countries. I think it might be illegal to blaspheme the Anglican Church in England, even. The condemn vs. allow thing is in fact accurate in some of the West, and it may be a mistake to think only in terms of American values, since this drama is not playing out in America.

2) The account I heard today was that the Danish cartoonists published the original cartoons in an explicit attempt to offend Muslims--they were dared to come up with the most offensive cartoon they could, and they took the dare. If this is true, then it makes no sense to react negatively to the rioting and other extreme responses the cartoons have garnered. Yes, they had the right to publish them. But to attempt to offend people to see how big a response you can get and to then react negatively when they are offended and do respond in a big way is just ridiculous.

3) Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. The globalization of Western (primarily American) culture is the single biggest factor contributing to the hatred traditional Islamic communities harbor toward the West. Bigger than Israel, even (outside of the contested territories, obviously). Insisting that the right to violate Islamic law and to disseminate that violation all over the world is fundamentally a part and parcel of Western values is not a strategically good idea at the moment, whether it's true or not.

4) It is often preferable to speak to others in their language rather than your own. I also heard today (from the same Islamic American source) that there are several episodes in the Quran in which the Prophet is ridiculed, and in every case he ignores the ridicule. Again, if true, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to talk to the aggrieved parties about responding as the Prophet would and embracing his values than it does to claim that they should embrace ours.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

1) True, but it is the Muslim clerics who are bringing American newspapers into it. I don't think they're drawing the distinction.

2) As I heard it, the cartoons were published in reaction to a story about how difficult it is to find people to illustrate a book about Mohammed. Whatever the story, though, saying "it makes no sense to react negatively to the rioting and other extreme responses the cartoons have garnered" doesn't work for me—it is never appropriate to respond to free speech with violence. This argument smacks of "she was asking for it" as a justification for rape.

3) My response to issues of free speech is similar to Rorschach's. Similarly short-sighted, perhaps, but I can't not assert my right to free speech.

4) Note that I'm not claiming anyone should embrace our values; I'm saying people should not impose their values on me. Different thing entirely. But I would agree with the sentiment, and would point to the following:

Muslims are taught the tradition of the woman who would regularly throw trash on the prophet as he walked down a particular path. The prophet never responded in kind to the woman’s abuse. Instead, when she one day failed to attack him, he went to her home to inquire about her condition.

[andele.livejournal.com]

I think the rape analogy is pretty poor in this context. There are no absolutes in the world, but I'm pretty comfortable saying that no woman wants to be raped. There are tons and tons of people who speak offensively in order to provoke others, every single day. And I stand by my point: if you intentionally attempt to provoke people, and you succeed, you have no one to blame but yourself. The only question is whether the provocation served a purpose that made it worthwhile (from the point of view of the speaker). There are many such purposes, and they range from illustrating social ills to simply taking a perverse (he said neutrally) joy in getting a rise out of people. But to assert that, because you were within your rights in provoking people, that means they shouldn't have been provoked is utterly disingenuous.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

And I'm pretty comfortable saying that no cartoonist wants to be murdered. Just as a woman should be safe parading herself in skimpy clothes in front of men, cartoonists should be safe in drawing whatever they like. "If you intentionally dress to arouse men, and you get raped, you have no one to blame but yourself"; "If you intentionally draw something to offend Muslims, and get murdered, you have no one to blame but yourself." I don't really see the distinction you're drawing.

Anyway, in this case, I believe the pictures were published, at least in part, to draw attention to a serious freedom of speech issue: to wit, people can't draw pictures of Mohammed without getting death threats levied against them. (I'm sure there were other reasons, like selling newspapers, but that's the stated intention of the editors.) I think they've succeeded, and whatever their initial intention that's a good thing.

[andele.livejournal.com]

You're muddying the waters here, though. Death threats don't take away your freedom of speech--only the state can do that. If we're talking about private citizens issuing death threats in response to religiously inflammatory speech, it is patently the case that there's no freedom of speech in the U.S. either. Nor will there ever, ever be. Hell, you can't even badmouth a fucking sports team in this country without getting death threats as a result. That is not hyperbole.

So let's run with that analogy. Say you go to State College, PA and burn Joe Paterno in effigy, in front of a group of people. You will, quite literally, be taking your life in your own hands. You might do it in order to expose a problem with American sports culture. It's a real problem; it needs to be exposed.

But if you get beat to a bloody pulp, and then express surprise or indignation at the response of the crowd, you're being disingenuous. And say a bunch of your friends comes down the next week and does the exact same thing to show their support of your action. And hell, say they also celebrate the downfall of American values and cheer for al Qaeda and deface a cross while they're at it. If they then continue to simply decry the maddened crowd that's threatening and beating them as mindless enemies of free speech, there's only so long they can go on, before they stop looking so much like innocent victims.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Death threats don't take away your freedom of speech--only the state can do that.

I would argue that the state can't do it either; by what means could they do so that would be worse than death threats? The right is the right; it can't be taken away. But self-censorship in the face of death threats is a serious problem in Scandanavia, more so than it is here, and the problem the newspaper sought to expose. Read the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy), if you haven't.

You seem chiefly bothered that the newspaper editor expressed surprise. I think the scope of the reaction warrants some surprise—this issue lay dormant for five months, then exploded beyond anyone's expectations. It was helped along by the fact that the Muslim who brought the cartoons to the Islamic world added several much more offensive cartoons to the portfolio. But even if the editor is being disingenuous, that does not obscure the fact that the cartoonists are victims, however provocative they were being. Theo van Gogh was deliberately provocative, too; it doesn't make what happened to him any less worthy of contempt. It's the job of artists to provoke. Nothing can excuse the threats of violence made against them; I don't see any kind of balance between the offenses of both sides.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Also: any time an artist is asked, "Why did you not say this?" and responds, "I was afraid for my life," it is a free speech issue, regardless of who is making the threat.

[andele.livejournal.com]

The right is the right; it can't be taken away.

That statement, while a legitimate point of view, is not the dominant one and is not currently supported by domestic or international legal scholars, who would say that the right is generated (not recognized) by constitutions and other legal documents and institutions.

Sure, it's the job of artists to provoke (also a minority view, but one I share). But look, these cartoons would have had nothing whatever to do with free speech if there had been no expected reaction to them. It was only the cartoons in combination with the reaction they were expected to garner (as detailed in the accompanying article) that formed a meaningful unit. I think that is, ultimately, my point. The article alone tells us that artists are censoring themselves. The cartoons do not illustrate the problem--in fact, they alone disprove that the problem exitsts. The only reason to print them is to get the Islamic extremists to act extreme.

There's a difference between a woman wearing skimpy clothing to arouse men and a woman with a hidden video camera and a SWAT team wearing skimpy clothing to arouse a registered sex offender.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Sure, it's the job of artists to provoke (also a minority view, but one I share). But look, these cartoons would have had nothing whatever to do with free speech if there had been no expected reaction to them. It was only the cartoons in combination with the reaction they were expected to garner (as detailed in the accompanying article) that formed a meaningful unit.

I would agree with that, although it also might have been intended as saying, "Look, don't worry about expressing yourself, nobody's going to kill you just because you draw a cartoon," in which case it sort of backfired.

I do think surprise is legitimate, though; this is like baiting a sex offender, as you describe, and having him rip off his skin to reveal a giant reptilian battle-robot that proceeds to destroy the neighborhood. I don't think anyone involved predicted the extent of the response.

P.S.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

1) Also, it's not illegal to publish Nazi materials in Denmark, which is the issue.

Re: P.S.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I just want to record here some quotes in support of my point, that the accusations of a double standard aren't focused solely on countries with anti-anti-Semitic free speech restrictions:

Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Seedes, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, called on the international community to enact laws that condemn insults against the prophet and holy sites. "Where is the world with all its agencies and organizations? Is there only freedom of expression when it involves insults to Muslims? With one voice...we will reject the apology and demand a trial," Al Riyad, a Saudi daily newspaper, quoted al-Seedes as saying.

...

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reiterated that..."it is also a disservice to democracy. It sends a conflicting message to the Muslim community: that in a democracy it is permissible to offend Islam. This message damages efforts to prove that democracy and Islam go together."

[link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060211/ap_on_re_mi_ea/prophet_drawings;_ylt=AiZlj8rKGHn_VWmciJfM7ESs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--)]

[wayman.livejournal.com]

While I by-and-large agree with everything you've said in the comments, I do have one large question about the initial part of your post--not its argument, but its example. The only versions of the "but" quote I've seen are in English; did Khomeni actually say it in English, or are these translations? If he did say it in English, then your example is fine, but if he didn't, then I'd want to be sure the translation was completely accurate before using it as an example.

[flammifera.livejournal.com]

I would actually prefer not to get deeply involved in this whole debate (although I could summarize that my general feeling runs along point 3) of andele's comment above), but I do also have one question/concern. I am not trying to resurrect any controversy about fact-checking and Wikipedia or anything, but I'm wary of using a Wikipedia article as the basis for general statements about the majority feeling in other populations, as in this comment. Given that Wikipedia articles depend on review by knowledgeable people, I'm just not confident enough that sufficient numbers of 'contemporary Muslims', from around the world, review that article to give it credence in such a wide-ranging claim.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Well, I just came back from a discussion with an Islamic scholar who supports that POV. More in a later post.

[sunjoy.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way, though perhaps not as militantly. When I hear people here who don't get why people have reacted with such hostility to "just a cartoon," I want to point out that these people live in a society where authority figures are rarely belittled without severe consequences.

It's pathetic that some people's response has been to make light of the holocaust, which is another non-sequitr: "A Christian newspaper reprinted Danish cartoons that blaspheme the Prophet... hmmm... let's attack Jews". Although I suppose attacking the holocaust is one of the few things that would rile-up secular Christian westerners.

I'm not sure I get the Anne Frank cartoon. Hitler raped Anne Frank (and the rest of humanity). The cartoon itself doesn't seem to be making fun of it, or condoning it, so much as depicting it. Painting a Hitler as a pedophile rapist doesn't exactly offend anyone but neo-nazi idiots.

[(Anonymous)]

I can most certainly assure you that the Ayatollah Khomeini had little comment on the subject, as he has been deceased since 1989. The Ayatollah Khameinei, on the other hand, did make such a comment.

[(Anonymous)]

I suppose I can't spell either. Khamenei, that is!

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Doh! I was wondering how he'd managed to stick around so long. Thanks!

(And, uh, who are you?)

[(Anonymous)]

An anonymous poster wondering just how orientalist and misinformed this discussion is going to get. Carry on.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Uh...okay. Not sure why you don't want to ID yourself, but be my guest. Do you have any specific misinformation to point out?

(Orientalist?)

[superbacana.livejournal.com]

Orientalist is a term invented by Edward Said, the Palestinian literary critic. He uses it to refer to Western perceptions of Arab society and countries, but I think his work is mainly popular among the sort of leftist academics who like to find the seeds of oppression in everything. From its use — and the fact that they didn't bother to explain it or themselves, and assumed that anyone that matters knows Orientalism is a dirty word — you can probably deduce that your anonymous poster is a arrogant but cowardly knee-jerk leftist academic-type (I read Orientalism at Swarthmore, and didn't hear much about it anywhere else).

Maybe I'm wrong, but at least I'm not posting anonymously.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I only know the term from art history.

[franzeska]

Uh... Said is a little more important and more widely read than that.

[god-of-belac.livejournal.com]

And Orientalism itself was pointing out particularly egregious faults throughout history. Like all other works, its message has been taken far to the extreme by buzzword-users, much as how Marx's writings have been used to justify all kinds of crap.

The book is unreadable, being a series of references to works which no one reads anymore, but if you've read those works it's good.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

It's still one of those works that you're likely to really dislike if you're not part of one particular subculture, which is a big subculture in academia but a tiny subculture in the world.

It's one of those works that tries to combat essentialism by doing a lot of stealth essentializing of its own, which is something I find to be infuriatingly endemic in academia.