andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2006-02-03 10:58 pm

Free Speech and When To (Not ) Use It

I'm somewhat torn over the recent events with the Islamic comics. In case you haven't been following it, the story goes something like this:

A Danish newspaper, covering a story that a writer had been unable to find an illustrator for their children's books about Mohammed (for fear of Islamic extemists), asked a group of cartoonists to draw something about Mohammed. They then published the resulting cartoons, as part of a piece on freedom of speech and the problems of people fearing reprisals for said speech.

This had the expected effect of causing mass uproar across the Islamic world, because (a) Islamic tradition is against images of any of the prophets and (b) one of the images implied Mohammed was a terrorist.

Now, on the one hand, I firmly stand behind people's right to any speech that isn't directly causing harm (i.e. shouting "fire" in a packed cinema, giving out the addresses of people to those that want to kill them, descriptions of how to construct nuclear weapons, etc.). On the other hand, just because you have the right to free speech doesn't mean that you ought to go around insulting people.

I have several comics that are deeply offensive - Preacher is deeply offensive about Christianity, for instance. Many Northern Irish people of the Unionist persuasion wouldn't be impressed with Troubled Souls. Obergeist is unlikely to go down well with people who lost family in the German concentration camps, and Faust is pretty much offensive to anyone in a 50 foot radius. Should I give them all up and toss them on a pyre?

I was deeply offended that people campaigned against Jerry Springer the Musical. And I'm deeply offended that they are trying to suppress the cartoons. Should the Muslims stop trying to get them banned because _I'm_ offended that they want to?

Should it matter that many Islamic newspapers routinely publish pieces referring to Jews as dogs and eaters of shit? Should we really care if they're offended by other people's imagery when they're publishing their own? Or is that like saying that all British people are responsible for the terrible nonsense published in the Daily Mail?

I think, in the end, that in one sense I wish they hadn't published the cartoons, largely because they mostly aren't any good - they're not that clever, and they aren't saying anything that couldn't be said in a less offensive way. In another sense, I think that not doing something _purely_ because someone out there will be offended will lead to people doing nothing. Everything will offend someone, and people should publish what they feel is right, without worrying too much about their audience.

Free speech includes the right to offensive speech, and much as I'm against the recent attempts to make "reckless" (i.e. accidental) incitement to violence illegal, I'm against any restraint on speech just because it will offend someone. Doing things _just_ to be offensive is generally the resort of the childish, and it doesn't interest me, but I'd rather that people were allowed to be childish than that they weren't.

[identity profile] cx650.livejournal.com 2006-02-03 11:46 pm (UTC)(link)
My question about this furore is: Why now? the cartoons were published back in september. Does this smell of orchestration or what?

[identity profile] allorin.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 10:58 am (UTC)(link)
"A group of Danish Muslims unsuccessfully sought to sue the newspaper for publishing the comics. When that initiative failed, a delegation of Muslims living in Denmark took their complaints to the Middle East, where they sought help from Muslim leaders."

Think it just took a wee while for he court case to finish, before they escalated the isue back Middle East.

From here: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398717,00.html

Also, though I can't find reference to it, I'm sure newspaper in France recently reprinted the cartoons. Given the current state of affairs in France regarding minorities living there, it really kicked things off. The story, naturally, wound its way back to where it started....

[identity profile] allorin.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 11:36 am (UTC)(link)
Ah. Thank you. Couldn't find a concrete mention on the web with which to tie up my woolly thinking.
shannon_a: (Default)

[personal profile] shannon_a 2006-02-04 12:02 am (UTC)(link)
There's a difference between offensive speech & hate speech.

Offensive speech might purposefully incite someone against the writer/speaker/artist, and that's his decision.

Hate speech might incite someone against someone else, and that's not really a writer/speaker/artist's decision to make.

Drawing Mohammed might be offensive speech, but if people don't like that, tough cookies. If we got rid of all speech that's offensive to someone else we'd be left with nothing.

Drawing Mohammed as a terrorist is starting to look more like hate speech to me. It's propagating a harmful racial stereotype with the purpose of making people hate those evil arabs.

[identity profile] thishardenedarm.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 10:00 am (UTC)(link)
who of course have confounded all our sterotypes by responding utterly reasonably

[identity profile] pickwick.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, but there was a T-shirt saying precisely that, and while people were offended by it, they were trying to get shops to stop selling it rather than stop it being made, and it never became a huge political scandal. Although I think the difference is that you're not meant to have pictures of Mohammed at all, whereas Christianity's big into pictures of Jesus.

[identity profile] thishardenedarm.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
yeah well boo hoo. personally i'm more offended by the hanging of two muslim adolescent boys for kissing; the stoning to death of women; the removal of property and fiscal rights from women; the removal of job rights from women; the assumption that womens bodies (not male desire) are the root of all evil; i find dignifing this medieval, agrressive, patriarchal power structure with the name of religion offensive. i find the way any criticism is met with the threat of violence offensive. Besides all that, a cartoon is pretty small beer. they can get over it, i'm sure Mohammed is big enough to take it. the dead boys and the women, on the other hand, are still in a pretty bad way.

[identity profile] thishardenedarm.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 09:38 pm (UTC)(link)
as a rational liberal, you are assumng that this process is amenable to rational change, i dont believe it is. Christianity and Judaeism made the transistion into modernity only with a great deal of screaming and bloodshed. they had to be offended into it, if you like, by a few rationalist martyrs willing to do what most of us aren't. Satirists, heretics, artists, scientists, maybe even a few cartoonists, people willing to risk their lives and not to kottow to bullying, censorship and torture. The Muslim religion doesnt seem to be transitioning any easier, no reason to expect it will. But boy does it need to. This is not a polite conversation we are having.

[identity profile] thishardenedarm.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 11:10 pm (UTC)(link)
the reformation was indeed from the inside, the enlightenment, on the other hand, the real begininng of the end for christianity as hegemony, was extrinsic, from science, from principled atheism, from we aint listening to this superstitious bullshit no longer. People died for that. Like people, no system changes WITHOUT some outside pressure. Ask the black panthers, ask the suffragettes.

To stand aside whilst people are abused and killed in the name of ideology, to stand by and say "give the poor dears time and try not to bother them, they'll sort it out" seems just like....well i don't know. Like saying slavery was what the blacks really wanted or deserved, that women wouldn't know what to do with the vote, like fascism was a matter for the germans, like we shouldn't intervene in Rwanda because its a tribal conflict. Like cowardice, like complacency. Like the way the police used to treat domestic disputes. The elephant in the room here that the liberals are studiously ignoring is a regressive and barbaric ideology. I want that to get as much offense and opposition as possible.

[identity profile] thishardenedarm.livejournal.com 2006-02-05 10:29 am (UTC)(link)
sorry, but thats either really naive or willfully stupid, the whole point about the call for universal sufferage was that half the population felt they were excluded, external, had no power within, no place within, were not excepted as a part of, etc. society. Ditto blacks, see also gay liberation circa 1968. The only sense in which these groups were within society was that they lived in the same country. If thats your argment, use "country" not society. If thats not your argument, well see the first sentence.

Lets go back to the cartoon, and it's context then i'm leaving you to your "if only every one was reasonable we could all get on and the bad things would stop " fantasy. Lets look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali, someone who is genuinely "within". escaping from the forced (sexual and domestic) servitude of many muslim women she decided to speak out against this in the Netherlands. She made a film about the widespread abuse of muslim women. One image showed passages from the Koran projected onto a womans whiplashed body. For daring to voice this, very oblique, critique of female abuse she is now under 24 hour police guard. The filmmaker she worked with, Theo Van Gogh, was shot dead in holland. Pinned to his chest was a note addressed to Ayaan, it said, "we are willing to die for our beliefs, are you?". (Really, google her)

Now, lets go back to the cartoon. I'm guessing that there may be some people within the Muslim world who, far from being offended, might actually feel a little bit of hope that someone has stood up against the bullies, the murderers and abusers, the men who run these societies in the name of God. I' thinking that for every protester burning down Ikea there will be a thousand silenced women who can't fucking wait for the day when this edifice crumbles. Who would be pleased with any show of solidarity. That anyone from the outside or inside was daring to provoke the bullies, the murderers and the abusers, to provoke them and not back down. Because they really are a bunch of cunts.

[identity profile] thishardenedarm.livejournal.com 2006-02-05 04:36 pm (UTC)(link)
ok one final angle, the idea of "the subject supposed to believe", the fictional other who believes what we no longer do. The idea that whilst we in the west are sophisticated, post-modern, cultural relativists, "they" are all sitting around believing, thinking thoughts like:

"Now that the Westerners are insulting everything we hold dear"

I really wonder if "they" do think that, or if thats not just another western cartoon, one that functions to distance us from the real human suffering that happens under these regimes, by designating them "other". I wonder if in fact the silent but very scared majority could give two fucks about idolatory.

[identity profile] allorin.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 11:31 am (UTC)(link)
"Drawing Mohammed as a terrorist is starting to look more like hate speech to me. It's propagating a harmful racial stereotype with the purpose of making people hate those evil arabs."

I disagree. Why does the cartoon have to be targetting every Muslim? Why can't it just be targetting those few, but prominent, hardline Muslim factions who actually DO use their religion, and the Prphet Mohammed, as a catalyst for terrorism?

By that rational, there shouldn't, then, be any cartoons depicting Bush or 'America' as butchers in the Middle east, because obviously, we (the rest of the world) thinks that every American is like Bush. /sarcasm.

These cartoons, like any other literature, require interpretation and introspection. America, remember, has huge factions of Christianity that are describing "Harry Potter" as satanic. A kids book. Gimme a break. The thing is, though, in any reasonably thinking country, you'll be allowed to read something yourself, and make up your own mind.

The point I'm trying (badly) to make, is yes, undoubtedly some people will interpret the cartoon as meaning all Arabs are terrorist. Those people are, frankly, as foolish as those people who think all Americans are as irresponsible and dangerous as P. Bush.

However, just because we shouldn't assume all Americans are nuts, doesn't mean we should not challenge the actions of their President. Equally, just as we shouldn't stereotype all Arabs, doesn't mean we shouldn't challenge the doctrine and actions of those who hide their fanaticism behind 'religion', and worse, incite violence.

I like the cartoon. I like that it has spawned this discussion. I like that it raises awareness of an issue, and that right (and wrong, sadly) minded people will interpret it, and consider it, and it will become a small part of their make-up and how they consider the world. My interpretation of the artist's purpose is that he/she was NOT trying to "make people hate those evil Arabs", but instead, was tackling a very real, very important issue facing us in the early 21st century, and provoking thought and discussion on it. Generaly, in my (admittedly limited) knowledge of cartoonist, that's always what they aspire to with their work.

[identity profile] allorin.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 11:43 am (UTC)(link)
No, but maybe that's not the issue it raises. Maybe the issue it raises is that we're not allowed to speak about these things.

Look at the reaction to one wee cartoon. Look at what's kicked off. Now the attitude in Saudi seems to be "Apologise, cease and desist, or we will consider you evil forever more and cut you off at the knees".

Anything that challenges that, that dares to speak out, that confronts that sort of oppression and censorship should be welcomed.

And personally, I'm challenging the idea that the cartoonist's sole/main aim was to offend. Ain't necessarily so.

Also, there cartoons attacking American policy in general (which I mentioned) and not solely Bush. Again, I don't think these should be censored, in the same way I don't think all Americans are as depicted in cartoons.

[identity profile] allorin.livejournal.com 2006-02-05 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
Well, we'll disagree then. Sadly, cartooons, as an artform, are subjective, and our interpretations are going to differ.

To me, the picture in the cartoon was a picture already depicted in the minds of many westerners by the actions of Islamic hardliners shown here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4682262.stm (though there were better, clearer pictures in today's papers - "Behead those who insult Islam" indeed), and in the Syrian burning of Scandanavian embassies. That in itself is a short step away from bombing. If actions do indeed speak louder than words, then the actions of those puporting to be Islamic are proving the cartoon accurate, if nothing else. They are burning embassies in the name of Mohammed. Anyone else get the sheer idiocy of that? "Your image of Mohammed as a violent terrorist offends us - therefore, we will act like violent terrorists, in the name of Mohammed." Yeah. Way to go.

[identity profile] allorin.livejournal.com 2006-02-05 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
by the actions of Islamic hardliners such as those shown here...

sorry.

[identity profile] arkhamrefugee.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 01:09 am (UTC)(link)
I feel that this has become less an issue about freedom of speech and more about the way that Islamic fundamentalists react to anything that they don't like. Which is to say that it seems as though every time one of those zealots opens their mouths, it's "You must change to our way of thinking/admit we are right/recant, infidel, or we'll kill you/bomb your embassies/take your countrymen hostage."

The same freedom of speech which we hold as allowing these artists to satirize Mohammed allows Muslims everywhere to hold protests, boycott Danish goods and burn people in effigy. So go them, says I. But when they start threatening violent retaliation on the artists, editors and their fellow Danes, I start choking on the tsunami of entitlement-based crap they're spewing.

wouldn't it be great if....

[identity profile] thishardenedarm.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 09:58 am (UTC)(link)
....in an I Am Spartacus gesture, everypaper in the free-ish world published the cartoons and issued free T Shirts and badges. What are they going to do, Fatwa everyone? Jihads all round?

The thing no-one is really saying in the media, particularly the politicians, is that these guys are sexist, ignorant, violent thugs and bullies, but we're really scared of them, so we'll appease them for the moment. very very few people have stood up to them. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a female muslim artist and politicin, is one. She just wanted to point out that maybe confining women to their homes and stoning the ones that went outside wasn't so cool. Google her. Her colleague was shot and she is now under 24 hour police guard.

Man these guys and everything they stand for NEED offending like nothing had ever needed it. Thats what satire and cartoons are for. Every paper. T shirts. Badges. I'll wear them if you do.

Re: wouldn't it be great if....

[identity profile] balthial.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 06:50 pm (UTC)(link)
And I'm with you.

[identity profile] stillcarl.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 10:56 am (UTC)(link)
If these had been your garden-variety racist cartoons, would other newspapers have jumped to their defence, along with publishing them? I doubt it.

[identity profile] stillcarl.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 11:57 am (UTC)(link)
These are religious beliefs and there's very good reasons race and religion are usually both mentioned when human rights are discussed. Beliefs aren't just ideas to their believers, who may consider them to be as true as the "race" they supposedly belong to.

And anyway, where's the idea in "Thou shalt not draw pictures of Mohammed"?

[identity profile] khbrown.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
If the idea is to avoid idolatry, then what's the problem with a satircal cartoon which depicts the figure as worse than they are, rather than better, and so hardly holds them up as a figure to be worshipped? Maybe I'm being overly rational, but I just don't get how being against idolatry necessarily means being against images/representations, especially when they're not aiming at mimesis.

[identity profile] missedith01.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 05:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Ina nutshell, I'm for the publication of stufff and for peaceful protest about the publication of stuff. I'm against death threats, from any quarter and against people giving into bullying.

[identity profile] balthial.livejournal.com 2006-02-04 07:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I wrote a post on this just a few minutes ago actually. Basically, I see it as a battle of ideologies. American Liberalism can be viewed as a religion, much as Confucianism can be viewed as a religion. And American Liberalism says "Respect everyone! Don't say offensive things! Just vote and try to make money!" But that's our religion, and the Muslim World ain't into it. In the Muslim World, offensive cartoons about Christians are a daily occurence, not something someone plans as a deliberate provocation.

The point of this is, American Liberalism and fundamentalism Islam don't get along. We really are opposed to Muslim values. We might as well say so.

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-02-13 02:30 am (UTC)(link)
The point of this is, American Liberalism and fundamentalism Islam don't get along. We really are opposed to Muslim values. We might as well say so.

Having just read this whole thread: yep. That sums it up I think. (though you could lose "American" from liberalism.)

I particularly like the realisation that liberalism is just as much of a cultural-relativistic credo as anything else eg Islam. there's no more reason for Islamic leaders to buy into "our" liberalism (the lack of differentiation in this whole debate between what individuals feel and what societal leaders can and do condone/have the power to enforce is another whole topic), than for us to buy into their treatment of women and gays. What we do about that is a problem for us, it appears, but not necessarily one we either can or should solve. Only a few years back (when I was being taught international law, ie 1978) whatever a sovereign country did to its own nationals, kill them, torture them, expropriate them, this still wasn't considered the business of other nations - indeed for them to interfere was generally seen as an act of war and an international wrong. Then human rights became more teethy (esp after stuff like Kampuchea and Rwanda and Bosnia and of course, the defusing of the Cold War and the Soviet veto in the UN). It seems to me we're now heading towards a Western imposition of Western consensus views on what be seen as second tier moral values, like freedom of expression, folowing on from the first tier "absolute musts" like torture and genocide - but this is causing more chattering among the classes.

Whether you see this as a good thing or a bad thing seems in many ways an irrelevance to what is actually happening - the dinner party talk rather than the actual process.

Though it is strange that there is not much talk above about inter- and trans-national recognition of human rights (nor of the fact that tho freedom of expression is a human right, so is fredom of religion and that human rights instruments tend far more to wishy washy balancing of incompatible rights than to any prioritisation of say fredom of speech; however much the US might wish the First Amendment was international law - it ain't.)

Incidentally I'm also suprised that no one has mentioned, re advancement of liberal causes worldwide by carrots, recent WTO efforts to swap trade advantages for human rights advances in , notably, China - a project which most have seen as a failure for various reasons.

[identity profile] balthial.livejournal.com 2006-02-13 04:41 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks, I'm glad someone doesn't totally disagree with me. And I think International Law has a good point. I have very mixed feelings about US attempts to go about telling other countries how to run their stuff. Its cultural Imperialism, yeah, but it also just doesn't get good results. I study China, and the human rights situation is pretty awful. There's no way a couple of international bureaucrats can change the situation. Perhaps we should not give preferential trade agreements to countries with poor human rights records, but saying "ok, they released 3 dissedents, now we can deal" doesn't do much.

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-02-13 12:23 pm (UTC)(link)
My understanding from colleague who teaches WTO law is that any type of sanctions and/or better treatment for human rights deal, tends to negatively impact those who need human rights most ie the poorest people in the country who most need the WTO trade advantages. As with all sanctions plans, it really doesn't work optimally.

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-02-13 12:35 pm (UTC)(link)
I wasn't saying China was a failure per se - just that WTO efforts to swap human rts for trade breaks have largely so far failed to achieve much, and are, in informed views, unlikely to.

I think it's interesting - knowing a bit more about China than I do about the Islamic world - that certain values do seem do get ameliorated (from a Western perspective) by engagement with Western liberalism, and some don't, being more rooted in what we might think of as the essence of Chinese culture. A certain amount of money and Internet access, etc, sloshing round Beijing and Shanghai etc, has certainly made huge inroads into communism in favour of a capitalist mentality (tho not at all in the huge amount of rural peasant areas); but the impression I have is that nothing much has changed in the Chinese leadership and general cultural attitude that gay and mentally ill people are basically (pick any two :-) sick, bad and wrong.

And as V pointed out just because it's a cultural norm in some places to stone people for coming out as gay, doeasn't make it in some absolute, liberal, let everyone have their views, way, "right".

Re the particular point of democracy - the impression I had was that increased wealth/westernisation of urban China had not in fact lead to more pressure for "democracy" - note the absence of another Tiananmen Square in the last 15 years - but merely for access to private wealth and the general materialistic trappings of a capitalist lifestyle. I have seen plenty of articles in the last 5 years or so bemoaning the depoliticisation of the average Beijing yuppie. Who needs free speech when you have a 3G phone?

[identity profile] channelpenguin.livejournal.com 2006-02-06 11:54 am (UTC)(link)
We really are opposed to Muslim values. We might as well say so.

The whole debate is about being able to say so without getting death threats (or actually killed). Which doesn't, as various people have poitned out, hold true everywhere - because there are bunches of people that don't accept that very idea.

I am perfectly happy if the hardliners want me to stay in and take whatever sh*t I get from whatever man I've been given to by my family. What's isn't right is to make me do it when I don't want to... but enough about the Daily Mail :-)

Opinions they are good. They vary. I think most of us just want a decent refereeing system to make sure it doesn't get out of hand... so we don't get hurt. Self interest. Also good. All there is in the end...

But, to be honest, if you want nasty people to play nice you have to come down hard on them - and then you are back to enforcing what you like and suppressing what you don't - fine line, fine line...

And they may as genuinely want to save your soul as you do theirs... or is it all just self-interest all round?

[identity profile] balthial.livejournal.com 2006-02-13 04:44 am (UTC)(link)
Self-interest, sure. Someone said so, we should defend him, we should give him security. I don't want freedom of speechto be refereed, not even if its in my self interest. If this means coming down hard on someone occasionally, sure. But only if the "nasty" thing they did was violent, not if they just said something offensive.