"Why we will defend the right to offend"

Why we will defend the right to offend
in The Daily Telegraph, 3/02/2006

“The furore in Europe and around the world over the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed, and which ridicule other aspects of Islam, is but the latest example of an increasingly dangerous cultural clash. Danish and French flags - symbolising two countries whose press has published the drawings - have been burnt in Pakistan in small but heated protests. European Union offices in Gaza were ringed by Palestinian gunmen, and a Norwegian mission in the West Bank has closed following threats from militants. In Western cultures with traditions of freedom of speech and, in many cases, anti-clericalism, these reactions seem extreme.

The editor of France Soir was sacked for publishing the cartoons, which first appeared in Denmark, even though he was seeking to uphold freedom of speech. Other papers have followed suit. Adhering to the prevailing disregard of freedom of speech in his own party, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson has criticised the publication as provocative. It certainly was: but does appeasement of forces hostile to Western values not perpetrate a far greater wrong?

The Daily Telegraph has chosen not to publish the cartoons. We prefer not to cause gratuitous offence to some of our readers, a policy we also apply, for example, to pictures of graphic nudity or violence. However, there might be circumstances in which the dictates of news left us with no choice but to publish - and where the public interest was overwhelmingly served by such an act, we would.

Our restraint is in keeping with British values of tolerance and respect for the feelings of others. However, we are equally in no doubt that a small minority of Muslims would be offended by such a publication to an extent where they would threaten, and perhaps even use, violence. This is a problem that the whole of the Western world needs to confront frankly, and not sidestep.

The right to offend within the law remains crucial to our free speech. Muslims who choose to live in the West must accept that we, too, have a right to our values, and to live according to them. Muslims must accept the predominant mores of their adopted culture: and most do. One of these is the lack of censorship and the ready availability of material that some people find deeply offensive: anyone who wishes to see the cartoons can find them within a few clicks on the internet.

Those Muslims who cannot tolerate the openness and robustness of intellectual debate in the West have perhaps chosen to live in the wrong culture. We cannot put it better than the editorial in an Arab paper in which the cartoons briefly appeared yesterday (before all copies were suddenly withdrawn): "Muslims of the world, be reasonable."”