Five Ideas to Fight For by Anthony Lester

Author:Anthony Lester
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2016-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

That are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population. Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no ‘democratic society’.39

The law of the American Constitution allows too much protection to hate speech. It allows suppression only when violence or violation of law is intended and likely to take place imminently. The test of imminence is too narrow. That is why Pastor Terry Jones could not be prevented or punished for publicly burning copies of the Qur’an in Florida in the certain knowledge that it would produce violence across the Muslim world.

The right to offend is the price of free expression in a liberal democracy. Nowhere was this principle clearer than in the global outcry at the barbaric murders at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in February 2015. On the evening of the attacks, crowds of thousands gathered spontaneously in Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes and Rennes, holding up placards with the phrase ‘Je suis Charlie’. The slogan quickly rose to the top of Twitter hashtags worldwide.

Charlie Hebdo has published many irreverent and deliberately offensive cartoons. It has blasphemed all faiths and derided politics and popular culture as well as religion. It has mocked the African sex slaves of Boko Haram. It once depicted the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost in a sexual threesome. It satirised the oppression of women under Sharia law and published cartoons of bullet-ridden Qur’ans. It portrayed the Prophet in degrading positions – once nude, once hiding a bomb in his turban. The Jihadists reportedly shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ (‘God is great’) after they gunned down nine of the magazine’s staff, a maintenance worker and two police officers.

Cartoons should enjoy no immunity from criminal prosecution if they are deliberately intended to stir up violence and likely to have that effect, even if violence is not imminent. Drawings can be as powerful as Mein Kampf. The Nazi leader Julius Streicher is infamous because his virulent anti-Semitic magazine Der Stürmer published cartoons portraying Jews as blood-sucking demons. That is why many Jews support strong race and religious hate speech crimes. I understand their concerns but they go too far in seeking to forbid free speech that causes them justifiable offence. The same is true for Muslims and Christians who press to limit insulting speech.

Many Muslims feel strongly that it should be a serious crime to insult the Prophet and Islam, along the lines of the old law of blasphemy. The Muslim Council of Britain pressed the Blair government to make religious hate speech a crime. New Labour feared that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 would lose them electoral support among British Muslims. The Home Secretary promised mosque leaders that if their followers supported Labour, the government would introduce the legislation they wanted. It kept that promise after winning the General Election in 2004 by bringing in a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill to forbid incitement against members of a religious group.

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