Charlie Hebdo: Here's why right to free speech is no right to insult

The media was justified in raving about the solidarity against the Paris attacks because it was the collective voice against terrorism, but celebrating it as an assertion of the right to free speech may not be entirely right. Right to free speech is not right to irresponsible speech. Doing what many of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world believe blasphemous is irresponsible. Just as one cannot certainly use it to justify the murderous attack by Islamic terrorists on Charlie Hebdo, one also cannot condone the offensive provocation by the satirical newspaper. That many publications, including the New York Times, refrained from carrying the controversial cartoons even while supporting free speech shows that the right should be exercised responsibly. [caption id=“attachment_2034879” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Firefighters carry an injured man on a stretcher in front of Charlie Hebdo office. AFP[/caption] When a large number of Muslims passionately believe that portrayal of the prophet as a human being and depicting him in images is a serious insult to their belief, what’s the purpose of lampooning him? As some may argue, there many not be any law in Islam against this idolatry, but if the generally held cultural norm finds it offensive, what’s the point in trying to prove it wrong? Where is the free speech here? Many observes consider newspapers such as Charlie Hebdo and the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, which in 2005 printed 12 cartoons on the prophet, as a testimony to Europe’s commitment to secularism and zero tolerance to religious extremism. It’s worthwhile to recall that the justification for the publication of the Danish cartoons, which also had an introduction criticising Muslims for “insisting on special consideration for their religious feelings” by the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose was that Muslims should be treated as equal to others. According to Rose, “The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.” The subsequent waves of response by Muslims across the world, including Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League and national governments clearly indicated that they found the cartoons inflammatory. In 2011, when Charlie Hebdo published its cartoons, its office was firebombed. Even moderates found the debates on the issue in Europe as marginalising Muslims and depicting their beliefs and customs as archaic. Vox quoted the US based Iranian scholar on religions Reza Azlan: Part of the offense may also come from the fact that the cartoons can appear explicitly designed to provoke." He suggested that publications that print such cartoons |“may often be attempting to provoke an extreme response in order to make a statement about who belongs in European secular culture”. Azlan also said that he had extensive conversation with the editor of the Danish publication, who apparently said “without apology, that those cartoons were a deliberate attempt to poke a stick in the eye of Denmark’s Muslim community. To rouse them, to essentially prove that ‘unless you can put up with this, you don’t belong in Denmark”. There were many other voices that didn’t agree with the right to free speech argument. Writing in CNN in the wake of the Paris Attacks, Sally Kohn, a television commentator, said: “As someone with a public voice, my free speech benefits from an extra megaphone, and while the principle of free speech means I can say what I want whenever I want it, in practice I try to think carefully about the impact of my words – and how they might be felt among others whether or not they share my belief system.” The cartoons as well as the terrorist attacks come in the wake the extreme anxiety over radical Islam and monsters such as the Islamic State and Boko Haram. However, responses that conflate Islamic terror with religious beliefs and practices will do more harm than any good. They will strengthen the sinister designs of the radicals and alienate the fence-sitters. The effort, therefore, should be not to homogenise religious beliefs, but to tolerate diversity, however hard it’s within one’s idea of secularism. As Kohn says, TThe reality is that the Muslim world isn’t just the leadership of Saudi Arabia and Iran, but also Indonesia and Mali. And it’s worth pointing out that several Muslim countries have elected or appointed female heads of state, something the United States has yet to manage." What was the whole purpose of Charlie Hebdo? Was it to strengthen secularism by forcing French Muslims to fall in through ridicule? Free speech is not to dress up insult as satire, that too when it’s abundantly clear that it will hurt the religious sentiments of more than a billion people.