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For thoughtful commentary on the flames now licking at the Western world in the wake of a series of Danish cartoons, one of
which featured the prophet Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb, I suggest Gary Younge's "The Right To Be Offended"
[http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/younge] in the February 27 issue of The Nation.
Younge raises two points that need to be heard above the self-righteous responses of the West. First, he explains, the
"clash of civilizations" mainstream claptrap put forth as a Western explanation for Muslims' anger -- that is, the
idea that Islam cannot coexist with free speech -- is a crock:
"Even on its own terms this logic is disingenuous. The right to offend must come with at least one consequent right
and one subsequent responsibility. People must have the right to be offended, and those bold enough to knowingly cause offense
should be bold enough to weather the consequences, so long as the aggrieved respond within the law. Muslims were in effect
being vilified twice--once through the original cartoons and then again for having the gall to protest them."
And secondly, Younge, points out, all of the Western head-shaking and indignation at the ensuing Muslim violence entirely
misses the point as to why the cartoons matter in the first place:
"Neither the cartoons nor the violence has emerged from a vacuum. They are steeped in and have contributed to an
increasingly recriminatory atmosphere shaped by, among other things, war, intolerance and historic injustices. According to
the Danish Institute for Human Rights, racially motivated crimes doubled in Denmark between 2004 and '05. These cartoons only
served to compound Muslims' sense of alienation and vulnerability. The Jerusalem Post has now published the cartoons. Iranian
newspaper Hamshari is calling for illustrators to ridicule the Holocaust. The race to the gutter is on."
Younge is right on both counts. If you live in a society that values free speech, you don't get to slather public space
with rank ethnic or religious slurs -- as with that certifiable crank Ann Coulter -- and escape lawful condemnation. Nor do
you get to duck the acknowledgment that the ensuing rage -- or even violence -- stems more from historic injustice than from
some sudden inability of the complainants to take a joke. This is not a rationalization of violence. It is, actually, a way
of addressing it.
Some of us here in the North American wing of Denmark have been saying this about talk-show slurs and sensitive political
hair-triggers for years. It's not that fruitcakes and racists and homophobes and misogynists do not have the constitutional
right to say horrible things. They do. But they also have the constitutional obligation (precisely for reasons of free speech)
to suck it up when they get pounded with enraged reactions that are within the law. Moreover, they have the moral obligation
to face up to the institutional injustices that make a cartoon or an ethnic joke so explosive.
The Los Angeles Rodney King riots and the O.J. Simpson trial were entirely about this very phenomenon. If L.A. were an
environment where blacks had a history of fair treatment by police, a guilty verdict for O.J. might have taken a jury an hour
and caused a furor only among paparazzi, and King's videotaped beating by cops (and the verdict that followed) would have
caused outrage but likely not insurrection. But L.A.'s history, instead, has been one of abuse, corruption and contempt when
it comes to the treatment of African American citizens by the police. The resulting rage has been palpable. And so, after
the King videotape and the Simi Valley verdict exonerating the officers, L.A. was "suddenly" in flames. And O.J.
was "not guilty." And countless white Americans were shocked, shocked at the bizarre behavior of those black folks.
To paraphrase every high school commencement speaker in America, with fundamental rights come great responsibilities.
With the right to speak abusively comes the responsibility to understand that your abusive speech may inflame long-standing
injustices. Or, as Younge puts it, "If our commitment to free speech is important, our belief in antiracism should be
no less so."
So, along with freedom of speech, how about freedom of predominantly-Muslim countries from American economic and political
hegemony? How about freedom of Iraq from American oil-motivated occupation? How about the freedom of Palestinians to seek
statehood and hold elections without American support of the current hypocritical and jack-booted Israeli regime?
Now, that would be democracy in action.
© 2006 Bruce A. Jacobs
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