Freedom of speech... just watch what you say draw

The following letter to the editor appeared in The Winnipeg Free Press on February 8, 2006:

The protests against controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad have spread across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. It is the satirical intent of the cartoonists, and the association of the prophet with terrorism, that is indeed very offensive to all Muslims alike. Many in Arab media describe it as a modern crusade. They speak of a campaign to distort and discredit Islam. America's war on terror is still largely perceived in several Muslim countries as a war on Islam -- a perception reinforced by the fact that it is happening exclusively in Muslim countries; namely Iraq and Afghanistan.

The controversy appears to pit Western traditions of free speech against a tenet of Islam that says images of the prophet are strictly forbidden. In the final analysis, the right to freedom of expression by no means implies the right to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory and offend religious beliefs.

My response:

The author does not understand the right to freedom of expression when he says it "by no means implies the right to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory and offend religious beliefs." Actually, that is exactly what the right to freedom of expression implies and is designed to protect.

It is easy to protect or defend expression that one agrees with. Nobody requests censorship of expression they support. It is only offensive expression that provokes calls for censorship and supression. Freedom of expression is freedom of ALL expression, not of specific expression as determined by select individuals or groups. The foundation of such a right is the recognition that the best way to combat incorrect, inaccurate, or inflammatory ideas is with facts, data, and better ideas, not the heavy-handedness of censorship. Opponents of expression resort to censorship when they are unable, or unwilling, to effectively contradict the offensive material intellectually.

As for the association of The Prophet with terrorism, the responsibility for that impression rests solely with those who fly planes into buildings, behead hostages, murder innocent civilians, and preach death and destruction in His name, not a cartoon in a newspaper.