A lot has been
written and said on the subject since the cartoon controversy broke
out. I particularly liked a column by Los Angles Times (also
reproduced in Dawn, Karachi) where it says, “The best way to counter
obnoxious speech is with more speech. Persuasion, not coercion, is
the solution. The point was poignantly made in Robert Bolt’s play,
‘A Man for All Seasons’ in which William Roper and Thomas More
debate the relative balance between evil and freedom:
Roper: So now you’d
give the devil benefit of law.
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to
get after the devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the law was down - and the devil turned round on
you - where would you hide? Yes, I’d give the devil benefit of law,
for my own safety’s sake.
In another column
published in Daily Times, Lahore, Peter Singer, a professor at
Princeton University who lost his grandparents in concentration
camps and authored, among other books, ‘My Grandfather and the
Tragedy of Jewish Vienna’, writes:
We cannot
consistently hold that the cartoonists have a right to mock
religious figures but that it should be a criminal offence to deny
the fact of holocaust. I believe that we should stand behind freedom
of speech. And that means that David Irving should be freed.
By contrast,
freedom of speech is essential to democratic regimes, and it must
include the freedom to say what everyone else believes to be false,
and even what many people find offensive. We must be free to deny
the existence of God, and to criticize the teachings of Jesus,
Moses, Muhammad, and Buddha, as reported in texts that millions of
people regard as sacred. Without that freedom, human progress will
always run up against a basic roadblock.
Then there were
letters in the New York Times on February 8, written by people of
different faiths that reflect a spectrum of opinion.
David Conner wrote
from Michigan:
Haven't we learned
that, in general, Muslims do not see the humor when their religion
is mocked? Newspapers have the right to publish what they wish. I
also have the legal right to say something to someone that I know
will push a hot button, egg that person on to great anger or even
violence. Having the legal right does not make it the smart or the
right thing to do.
Daniel Baker wrote
from Connecticut:
As a Jew, I am
especially sensitive to the kind of outrage religiously offensive
caricatures can inspire, and I empathize with my Muslim cousins. As
a liberal American, I am sensitive to the complex interplay between
the press's freedom to publish these images and legitimate questions
concerning the wisdom of doing so. Yet at the same time, I am struck
by the inescapable irony of witnessing chanting mobs responding to
the insult of being stereotyped as violent by rioting and burning
embassies and threatening to behead those who have offended them.
And finally, a
reader from Philadelphia wrote:
As a Muslim, from
what I know about the life and character of the Prophet Muhammad, I
am sure that he would not have been angered by the Danish cartoons,
nor would he have asked his followers to go on a rampage in protest.
He was kind, gentle, forgiving and generous to a fault.
Unfortunately, some Muslims do not emulate any of those
characteristics and yet profess abiding love and affection for him.
By burning embassies and threatening to kill people, the
demonstrators have done more damage to the name of the Prophet
Muhammad than the Danish cartoons.”
Philadelphia, March
9, 2006
