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Freedom is not to insult
• WHILE in principle I agree wholeheartedly with Alan
Beale’s hostility to religion, (Letters, March 2), the
case of the Danish cartoons or to be more precise caricatures
(there is a difference) is not as simple as it might first seem.
These caricatures were first published on September 30 2005
by Jyllands-Posten a Danish newspaper of extreme right wing
persuasion with a strong line in Xenophobia.
They were published to provoke a response and when after a week
that response had not come, journalists were sent to speak to
Islamic religious leaders known for their fundamentalist views
to ask “Why Don’t you protest?” Eventually they
did react, alerted their co-thinkers in the Middle East and
the tragic events of the last few weeks resulted.
It is important to stress here that none of this had anything
to do with free speech or even attacking the iniquitous practices
of any religion.
Were we talking about an article in a progressive publication
attacking Islam for its treatment of women, gays, children those
of other religions or the non-religious I would go to the barricades
with Albert to defend them but caricatures in a paper of the
kind I have described which has never defended free speech,
would not publish anything critical of Christianity or of the
Danish establishment in general is something quite different.
These caricatures can be compared to anti-Semitic caricatures
published by the nazis’ newspapers which paved the way
for the Holocaust. A similar process is now happening in Denmark
and other European countries with the Muslims.
Edmund McArthur
Black Cat Press, Lamb’s Conduit Passage
WC1
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