Free speech does not include Islam

...according to many Muslim leaders, anyway. This is from The Economist:

Religious leaders, scholars and business people are meeting all over the world to argue about free speech and Islamic sensibilities. How much does this achieve?

[...]

As well as repeating certain familiar commonplaces and negotiating certain familiar taboos, participants in inter-faith gatherings do sometimes run into real questions, that make a difference to the world at large. One such is how, if at all, freedom of speech can be reconciled with the Muslim demand for a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities. At this week's meeting in Malaysia, that question was addressed in a way that frightened the relatively few participants whose understanding of civil rights was rooted in a Western, liberal world-view.

Speaker after speaker called for some formal, internationally agreed restriction on the defamation of religion. “I can never accept that freedom of speech is morally right when it offends my faith,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior Saudi official (and former head of his country's intelligence service). Several participants said there should be a legal regime to uphold an article in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (a UN treaty that came into force in 1976) which states that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”

Put like that, the proposition sounds reasonable. But it can easily turn into a censor's charter. In Britain, for example, a new law outlawing “religious hatred” would have made it impossible—at least in its early version—to express strong disagreement with the tenets of any faith. Western civil libertarians are extremely nervous of any national law, let alone international regime, that formally restricts free speech on religious matters...

Yes, indeed. I wonder how many of the Canadian chattering classes, so sensitive to the concerns of--for the time being--cultural minorities, would agree with similar prohibition on mocking Christianity?

Mark C.

Posted by markc at June 13, 2008 09:47 AM