This week several European newspapers reprinted offensive cartoons of Mohammed from Denmark's Jyllens-Posten that were originally published on Sept. 30, 2005. Crude cartoons met crude reactions: Muslims in Beirut, Dubai and Damascus burned all things Danish; Iraqis, Indians, Indonesians and Iranians rallied; Hamas called for executions; and NATO soldiers killed Afghan rioters. Clearly, free expression'whether in Jyllens-Posten, Washington Post, or The Daily Cardinal'can be offensive. Fittingly, the Vatican commented: 'The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers.' But the Holy See's idea is wrong. Freedom of thought and expression must entail the freedom to offend.
Jyllens-Posten originally published the Mohammed cartoons as a reaction to perceived hyper-sensitivity in the press towards Islam and especially criticism of Islam. For some, criticizing another's God is the peak of offensiveness; yet if we wish to maintain our liberal system we must not concede that certain beliefs are above criticism.
The New York Times reported on Feb. 6 that 200 members of the Iranian Parliament stated that '[the cartoonists] have not learned their lesson from the miserable author of the [Satanic Verses],' referring to Salman Rushdie, whose book, which is critical of Islam, earned him an in absentia death sentence from the Ayatollah. When states or faiths hold certain beliefs above criticism they enter an authoritarian hell where public criticism is considered violence against state and faith. This criticism is often met by state- and faith-sanctioned violence'manacles and bullets.
Western liberalism, in contrast, holds that anyone can criticize any belief and that no single man (or holy book) gets to decide for any other what beliefs are true and constitute knowledge. Furthermore, liberalism holds that criticism is not a destructive, violent force but a productive, knowledge-producing force. Criticism of all ideas, as Jonathan Rauch and others back to Locke and Mill argue, is the best and perhaps the only way to productively channel prejudices.
While it is hard to imagine Americans rioting over blaspheme of Jesus in Saudi newspapers, we are not perfect. When the Washington Post recently published Tom Toles' cartoon depicting the U.S. Army as crippled, several Joint Chiefs of Staff accused the paper of doing 'a disservice to [its] readers.' The disservice being criticism of the Pentagon, which shows even the most formidable powers of our government feel threatened by criticism.
Moreover, our own UW-Madison, as Professor Donald Alexander Downs chronicles in his 2005 book Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus, saw a strong anti-free speech campaign in the 1990s. It was only defeated at decade's close with the abolition of the faculty speech code in the Faculty Senate. Free speech on campus is thankfully now (more or less) the norm.
The point is that a tendency to tremble at the slightest criticism is neither partisan nor ideological at root. Muslims riot and U.S. Generals rage when confronted with a cartoon, while campus liberals raise the flag of political correctness. Yvette Piette's caustic political cartoons, published in The Daily Cardinal, show that free expression can attack left-wing sensibilities; her work sometimes has a 'slightly-to-the-right-of-Attila-the-Hun' tone. For example, on Sept. 29, 2004 during the last presidential campaign, a particularly Piette cartoon had Senator John Kerry crying over a dead hamster while ignoring a pile of aborted fetuses.
This is not to say that Piette's cartoons are all unfair; arguably, her three monkeys of political correctness is a classic. Rather, this is to imply that left-wingers can be just as reactionary in their responses to offensive speech. For example, Wisconsin's hate crime law, favored by democratic Gov. Doyle, is a mild form of authoritarianism, easily over-looked as it targets those whose beliefs, as we all know, are wrong. Justificatory left wing arguments can, in some ways, parallel those of right-wing reactionaries.
True liberalism is freedom to think, to criticize and to offend. To take the other track is to equate thoughts and criticisms with violence. As the case of the Danish cartoons and Muslim rioters shows, such equation means coercion is the proper response to offensive expression and criticism. In this matter, to apologize for the Muslim rioters and the fanatical exegetes of the Koran is the first step on the track that ends in authoritarianism.
