So, we now have the breaking news that a a man armed with knives and axes attempted to break into the home of Kurt Westergaard, one of the artists who created the Danish cartoons (see pic).
The response to such terrorism must be more speech that religious fundamentalists find blasphemous, hence my reposting the picture. If you allow the clergy to determine what can, or cannot, be said, you eventually create a theocracy, and history has shown that theocracies are amongst the worst forms of despotism.
Additionally, as I have said before, “If your God can’t take me calling him a pig felcher, then he ain’t much of a God.”
While I understand how backward 3rd nations, like, for example, Ireland might want to outlaw blasphemy, I think that modern nations must necessarily understand that as a condition for full access to the benefits of western economies and markets.
The free traders believe that open markets create open societies, but given the explosion of blasphemy laws, and blasphemy prosecutions, since the adoption of the GATT (Now WTO), I would argue that the opposite has occurred.
The reduction to costs involved in acceding to the demands of medieval fundamentalists, because the current model of “free trade” means that a country has full access to international markets unless their policies are nearly genocidal, has led mainstream politicians who are looking for allies and coalition partners, to sign off on demands that are contrary to modern civil rights.
FWIW, I believe that the same sanctions should be applied to laws that criminalize criticism of royalty (Thailand) or the nation (Turkey, etc.).
The "right" to blaspheme Muslim faith must have been available, and commonly exercised, in the most restrictive European monarchies. The cartoon above is an act of hate speech, which panders to the prejudices of the majority at the expense of a weak and vilified minority. Would you be supportive of, say, a Texan cartoonist depicting a black man with a bomb in his hair?
A true act of free speech goes against the sentiments of the powerful, not against those of a weak minority.
You will note that the case of backwards nations implementing anti-blasphemy statututes is Ireland, which passed such a law to protect the Catholic church.
I believe that the right to ridicule the beliefs and the holy men of a religion is crucial for the existence of full civil rights in a real democracy.
When, for example, Denis Diderot says that, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest," it's very easy to call that hate speech and to try to ban it, but I feel that it is essential that people be allowed to say such things.
The use of violence, whether through the state or through non-state actors to "protect" religion from offense is itself an offense to freedom and intelligence.
Kings and priests were people of influence and privilege – attacking them, like attacking the Catholic Church in Ireland, is very different from attacking a vilified minority (or, and this is another important aspect of this case as well, being part of a campaign to legitimize killing in foreign countries).
Sure, we all condemn violent attacks on the cartoonist, but the fact is that the cartoonist was inciting hatred toward Muslims. The consequences of such incitement are just as violent, on a much larger scale.