The price of freedom

Offensive cartoon results in calls for murder

By Guruchathram Ledchumanan

The Minority Report

A New York-based, radical Muslim website, revolutionmuslim.com has called for action against the creators of South Park for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. They weren’t exactly animal lovers. Some may find South Park’s politically incorrect humour offensive, but I find political correctness to be as evil a scourge as racism, homophobia, or sexism.

The posting on the radical website said, “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show.” Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker who was killed by a Muslim extremist for making a documentary about violence against women in Muslim communities in 2004. They are not alone in defending their faith from the blasphemy of the infidel.

The Malaysian government has also strongly urged the Swedish government to do something about Swedish newspapers that reprinted a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad. Any depiction of the prophet is offensive to the faithful. However, in many other countries, freedom of expression is an equally sacred right, even the freedom to express offensive ideas. In the so-called war on terror, this is a battle between religion and freedom of expression.

“Malaysia strongly denounces the reprinting of the caricature of Prophet Muhammad by three Swedish newspapers on 10 March,” said Malaysian Foreign Affairs minister, Anifah Amin. He said that Malaysians were worried that such “despicable acts disregard the sensitivity of the Muslim world in the name of freedom of expression. However, he had no problem using the very freedom he condemns in order to speak against it.”

His comments came after the reprinting of the caricature in Swedish papers last week following the arrests of seven people in Ireland last Tuesday over an alleged plot to assassinate Lars Vilks, the artist behind the caricatures. He has a $100,000 bounty on his head from an Al-Qaeda linked group. This isn't the first time: in 1988, Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for the murder of non-Muslim novelist Salman Rushdie for money.

In the past, dictators and terrorists used the battle against free speech as a weapon in their arsenals. Every time we censor something out of fear, we help them. It begs the bigger question, to whom do you give the right to decide which speech is harmful? Who gets to decide what the consequences are? To whom would we give this job? Who gets to delegate what you and I can read? I have no nominees.

We probably won't reprint the cartoons here not only for fear of offending the faithful, but also out of fear of retaliation. If we have to tiptoe around anything someone finds offensive, those who believe in the ideas of the Enlightenment and free speech would be offended, but I have yet to hear of a group of non-believers kidnapping a Muslim fundamentalist and torturing him until he apologizes.

If moderate Muslim nations want to condemn fundamentalist behaviour, they can. However, in my country at least, they are have joined the condemnation of the cartoons and urged the Swedish government to bring pressure on the Swedish free press. They are calling for persecution via religious criticism.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Just as I would not be a slave, I would not be a master.” Similarly, just as I do not want to be censored, I do not want to censor. It's offensive for me to read in the Bible that if I don't accept a story of a human sacrifice that happened in Jerusalem, I will go to Hell.

Just because I disagree with that point of view, I don't go and burn down the nearest church or mosque. I have yet to form a mob to vindicate my hurt feelings. Something that gives offence is seen as legitimizing violence. Are cartoons worth lives?

Unless you're willing commit suicide for your cause, get ready for the compromises that you will have to make but don't do it in my name. Surrender your freedom in your own name and leave me out of it. I have not lost my faith in free speech; I'm fighting to defend it by using it right here. Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us about this when he said that, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

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