An old Persian proverb says: “A madman throws a stone into a well which 100 wise men cannot take it out.“ And the Danes have thrown that stone.
What started with the publication by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten of 12 blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) has become an international crisis. It has led to violence, protests and global tensions.
Jyllands-Posten maintains that the cartoons were an exercise in free speech, but many contend that the depiction of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in such an insulting manner is culturally offensive.
Although the move offended the religious sentiments of over a billion Muslims around the world and will certainly entail a heavy cost for both the Danish government and countries that reprinted the cartoons, it raises a number of serious questions about the scope of free speech.
To what extent are we free to express what we think is right but others think not? Where is the distinction between free speech and insult, between expressing our opinion and ridiculing someone else’s religion?
When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was decried after being quoted by most newspapers worldwide as calling the Holocaust a myth, not even a single western publication defended his right to free speech. The Iranian president had only expressed his opinion but was then criticized vehemently by most countries and international organizations, including the Germans who nurtured the ruthless Nazi culture and even the United Nations, which is supposed to protect free speech!
All proponents of free speech defend the president’s right to ask why Holocaust should not be criticized. If there are taboos and redlines to be avoided, why should the West violate them when it comes to sensitive Muslim issues? The inconsistency in the European approach is glaring.
One of the ’European’ cartoons depicted Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) with a bomb in the form of turban, with a lit fuse and the Islamic creed written on it. What is it trying to convey? Perhaps the message is that the Muslims have developed a violent attitude toward the world. If this is true, how can the Europeans justify their own massacre of millions of people in two wars within just half a century? Why do the Europeans insist that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust? Because the more they exaggerate the number of Jews killed by their fellow Europeans, the more it is indicative of their brutal and murderous race.
But how did the Danish judicial system deal with the issue?
A number of Muslim organizations filed complaints with the Danish police claiming that Jyllands-Posten had committed an offense under section 140 and 266b of the Danish Criminal Code, which prohibit publicly ridiculing or insulting the dogmas of worship of any lawful religious community in Denmark. On January 6, 2006, a Danish public prosecutor decided to discontinue the investigation as he found no basis for concluding that the cartoons constituted an offense.
Section 140 prohibits blasphemy, but this law has not been used since 1938. Section 266b has never been used to prohibit statements offensive to religion, either. That is, the Danes, who represent the European free society, do not even implement their own laws, let alone respect others’ beliefs and values.
But Muslims have a lot of respect for other prophets. For Muslims, it is as much a punishable crime to insult Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as it is to insult Prophet Jesus (PBUH) and Prophet Moses (PBUH).
Now that the worst possible taboos are being broken by the Europeans, Muslims certainly will not want to stay behind. They will not abandon the issue of Holocaust, which is the Achilles’ heel of the West.
The Europeans must realize that they have made a grave mistake and cannot get away with it.
As an English proverb says, “People who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones.“