Some time ago when I warned and the danger of giving the UN, or even some cooperative arrangement with the Europeans, control over the internet I suspect my concerns about free speech seemed paranoid and irrationally pro-american (trust me I’m anything but). Sadly, the reactions by Europe, the UN and other nations to the islamic cartoon controversy have demonstrated that the European and International support for free speech is even weaker than I imagined. I will try an do my part to combat censorship by supporting (if I can) the BUY DANISH campaign to offset the effect of the economic sanctions and boycott. Hopefully I can convince you to do the same in this post. Also while I support the idea of reposting the cartoons to show that calls for censorship will have the opposite effect (solidarity is such a weasel word) I think it would just be pretentious to think I would be doing more than wasting space here. So consider the cartoons reprinted here and if anyone reading this would actually be offended or outraged if I did post them send me an email and I will post them for you.

When I first heard about this controversy I thought it was kinda silly. Another moronic religious group getting upset over a silly and pointless (though still worthy of legal protection) publication of some cartoons. Sure the US state department criticized the publication as did the UK government through Jack Straw but this seemed like nothing but the standard governmental critique of statements they find disagreeable not a serious attack on free speech (even if both statements have been misquoted). However, a bit of research showed that the original publication wasn’t merely a pointless stunt like the Piss Christ display but was a reaction to the existence of an effective curtailment of free speech in Denmark by fear. Additionally while the reactions by the US and UK governments were unfortunately lacking in any strong defense of free speech many other European and international organizations actively attacked that.

However, a bit of online research revealed the true extent of the attack on free speech. Of course their was condemnation by islamic countries with some even imposing economic sanctions but that is unfortunately unsurprising. More disturbing was the fact that there was only weak and isolated support for Denmark’s stand on free speech from other governments with some first world countries like Russia and the Vatican suggesting that the right to free speech ought to be curtailed. Most disturbing though was the response of various European and International institutions. Parts of the UN are proposing investigating Denmark for racism with the Human Right’s Commissioner suggesting she is critical of the decision by Denmark to respect free speech. Parts of the Norwegian government are suggesting that this type of speech are banned by laws against hate speech (or at least trying to make it look like they believe this). The Council of Europe is explicitly criticizing Denmark and the EU has been making critical noises. Of course the EU did come out against any boycott of Danish goods and I suspect all of these organizations are at least somewhat internally divided but what is disturbing is the public support this suggests for curtailing free speech. In fact there is even a push in some quarters to create international laws limiting anti-religious speech.

Unfortunately I think this sort of erosion of support for free speech in Europe was inevitable. The Europeans (the british slightly less so) have always had a weak stomach for free speech. They have never really accepted the notion that even truly unpalatable or offensive speech must be tolerated (so long as it isn’t a direct incitement to violence) and most European countries have some laws against racist speech or other ‘really bad’ types of speech (I’m not crediting the US citizen with any great virtue…probably just an effect of our government or greater diversity). Once some types of ideas (blacks are inferior, the holocaust never happened, etc..) are made illegal it makes it much easier to slide down a slippery slope of restricting more and more types of expression. Additionally the greater role of the government in supporting arts, media and other forms of expression more frequently forces the government into the role of deciding what sort of speech is acceptable and blurs the line between government and private speech.

Of course it is true that some types of speech (holocaust denial, racism, etc..) are deserving of legal protection but are nevertheless morally reprehensible to make. Unfortunately many people in this controversy (including some US papers) make the mistake of equating religious offense with the kind of truly objectionable speech like racist denunciations. Not only is this an error but the ultimate effect of such a classification would be disastrous. The classification is in error because, as many people have pointed out, religious belief is something people can adopt or reject not a fixed unalterable aspect of their being. Thus it is important to criticize religion to influence people’s beliefs and that criticism is bounded in the negative effect it can have. One can never believe the harms of being criticized for your faith are worse than the benefits provided for being faithful otherwise one could just give up your religion, i.e., bearing religious criticism gives the sufferer a feeling of righteous struggle while the victim of racial discrimination might only feel oppressed.

More important though is the pragmatic consequence of ruling religious offense out of bounds. Since there is neither an objective standard of what constitutes religion nor what constitutes offense this sort of behavior encourages people to take more and more offense at smaller and smaller infractions. This situation is the perfect example. There are plenty of media items mocking the christian religion (piss christ) and certainly no absence of anti-jewish media that does not generate the same calls for restricting the freedom of speech. It is obvious that there wouldn’t be any calls to restrict free expression if the islamic world had denounced the cartoons the way the vatican denounces anti-catholic expression but otherwise shrugged and gone about their business. The motivation for restricting free speech in this case is nothing but the great offense muslims take at these cartoons.

Since religion is nothing but a set of beliefs that many people accept and really care about a prohibition on anti-religious speech is just a prohibition of criticizing things people really really care about. Deciding that speech should only be allowed when it doesn’t criticize something lots of people really care about strikes at the very core of the free speech protection. Free speech to say things that aren’t unpopular isn’t free speech at all. Even if people refrain from engaging in this sort of speech for purely voluntary grounds it just encourages religious groups to find more and more items offensive. If I was a christian who saw that an extreme reaction by the islamic community stopped offensive items from being published in the future why wouldn’t I whip my church up into a frenzy next time something like Piss Christ comes out. After all if they don’t have to see stuff they don’t like why should I?

UPDATE: Interesting how no muslims seem to be getting upset about the US supreme courts generally positive depiction of the prophet. Not to mention the long history of such depictions in christian and islamic contexts. In short the islamic complaint is nothing but a demand for special consideration not to be critisized the same way christianity and judaism are critisized.