Were the artists alive today they would be guilty of insulting Islam and sentenced to death by stoning in Iran. If they were Saudi Arabians they would be executed by being beheaded.
In an op-ed in
London’s Evening Standard, Rashid Razaq wrote that as a Muslim he knew that there is no God given right not to be offended, and that the murder of the
Charlie Hebdo journalists wasn’t an attack on freedom of expression so much as an attack on an easy target by those to whom satire poses an existential threat because they fear that “we’ll realise their brand of religion is a joke.”
The British and Irish media didn’t think a religion that created fanatics who would kill you for drawing a picture or expressing an opinion that they didn’t like was a joke. Daring to show images that poked fun at Islam was not something that the majority of their news outlets were brave enough to do. Most hid behind the position expressed by Dennis Staunton, deputy editor of the Irish Times. He defended his paper’s decision not to republish the
Charlie Hebdo cartoons on the grounds that “they would cause gratuitous offence to some Muslims.”
After the initial outrage that followed the Paris massacre, there has been a steady backsliding by world leaders. All of them condemned the killings and issued statements that there was never a justification for the murder of innocents, but then one by one they made remarks that freedom of expression does not include the freedom to mock religion. As Pope Francis explained, “One cannot provoke; one cannot insult other people’s faith; one cannot make fun of faith.” The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, agrees with the Pope as does President Obama and Hillary Clinton. She was the one who first called the video that she initially claimed was responsible for the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi “inflammable and despicable.”
The fear of offending Muslims has spread well beyond the talking points of world political and religious figures. The Oxford University Press, which is the world’s largest book publisher, has sent letters to its authors informing them that certain subjects may not be mentioned in the books that the Press has commissioned. One letter prohibited the mention of “pigs plus sausages, or anything else which could be perceived as pork.” Another letter, obtained by
The Guardian, warned the author to “be extremely cautious about cultural taboos such as young men and women co-habitating as students, or girls going out shopping for shorts.” Jane Harley, the publishing director at Oxford University Press, defended the prohibitions on the grounds that “sensitivity is key in global publishing.”
The freedoms that we in the West cherish so dearly were born and flowered during the English Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson considered the three leading figures of the Enlightenment, Francis Bacon, John Locke and Isaac Newton “the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception.” Locke whose
A Letter Concerning Toleration and Two Treatises of Government played such an influential role in the development of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution attended Christ Church, Oxford. For the press of a university that played such an important role in the Enlightenment to display craven cowardice rather than uphold the principles of free speech is disheartening to say the least.
In the song
Land of Hope and Glory, there is the line, “Mother of the free.” Freedom of expression is the foundation stone upon which all of the freedoms we hold dear are built. When the fear of reprisal is the reason why British news outlets and publishers censor themselves, then the nation where our current concepts of freedom and democracy were first enunciated is no longer free, and the battle against Islamic fanaticism has already been lost.
