By Haroon Siddiqui

The Toronto Star
Feb. 23, 2006

Gary Younge, the New York-based black British columnist, has written this about the Danish cartoon controversy in The Nation magazine:

“Muslims have, in effect, been vilified twice: once through the original cartoons and then again for having the gall to protest them. Such logic recalls the words of the late South African black nationalist Steve Biko: `Not only are whites kicking us, they are telling us how to react to being kicked.’”

Confusion continues to mark the Western response to the issue. Some of this is because we are in uncharted waters. But something else is at work — double standards and insidious attempts at delegitimizing the Muslim protests.

Notorious British historian David Irving has just been sentenced in Vienna to three years for denying the Holocaust. Radical British Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al Masri has been jailed, among other things, for inciting hatred. About time.

Yet there’s silence from freedom of speech advocates who were on their pulpits just days ago.

Denying the Holocaust is not the same as poking fun at a prophet, some might say. Muslims might respond that the cartoons contravened the historical fact that Muhammad was not a terrorist with a bomb in his turban.

Masri’s case offers a better parallel. Besides terrorism-related charges, he was convicted of fomenting hate against Britons. Muslims said the Danish cartoons did exactly that to them. How does a democracy decide which hate is worse?

In France, the Catholic Church last year won a lawsuit against a fashion designer depicting The Last Supper with semi-nude women instead of the apostles. Where were the noisy advocates of freedom of speech then? Or, do they pop up only to claim the right to bash Muslims?

The cartoon episode has little or nothing to do with blasphemy. Some Muslims invoke it but that’s a tangent democracies need no longer take.

The real issue is that freedom of speech has limits, by law and by social dictates (self-censorship).

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/yfk2xyd