An Illustration of Western Hypocrisy

I recently wrote a lengthy essay on this and just came across a news story perfected matched to my writing. First, here is my abridged essay:

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When the Danish cartoon controversy broke out my immediate impulse was to criticize those calling for censorship. Although grossly offensive and racist, in a free society people are at liberty to offend.

The consequences imposed on the offender should be, first and foremost, non-violent and within the private sphere. The government should never censor anyone, but free citizens are at their will to strongly criticize and boycott such persons and their writings. By doing so they send a message that newspapers engaging in the propagation of hate will suffer demise as their ad revenue and subscriptions dry up. Something most papers will want to avoid. This measure of civil action will enlighten public discourse without relying on the heavy hand of the state.

But the point of this essay - as the title informs - is not on the question of freedom of speech per se, but on Western hypocrisy toward that question. There was a moment of Atlantic solidarity during the Danish episode as one newspaper after another reprinted the cartoons and stated that they indeed have the right mock Islam. Fair enough. But do they apply this right selectively or on universal principle?

The Western world is not home to unrestricted freedom of speech. There are strong penalties for certain rhetoric: primarily that surrounding the Holocaust. Many Western nations explicitly ban such admittedly grotesque practices like denying or ‘water-downing’, so to speak, Nazi crimes against the Jewish people.

These are vile deeds - and better someone be ostracized from polite society than become a martyr for neo-Nazis - but they are, or should be, protected free speech. No group may rely on the state to protect its sensibilities from historical distortion. Many European governments disagree and believe that some groups should be accorded special protection, however. France’s parliament, to cite one example, recently banned the denial of the Armenian genocide - which, unlike the Holocaust, it is a contested point amongst historians whether Ottoman explosion and crimes amounts to genocide. Under French law, historian Bernard Lewis, say, would be charged with a crime for stating otherwise as he did in his definitive book on modern Turkey. Not only are such parliamentary decrees illiberal - to rule that one side of a debate or malicious lies are now not just wrong but illegal - but they testify to Western hypocrisy.

If European governments are going to be in the business of protecting the hurt feelings of people, then why is this selectively applied? More to the point: why is it that whenever Muslims take umbrage at cruel racism directed toward them it is not only that they are met with indifference, but, rather, Western politicians and editorial pages suddenly discover a backbone for unlimited freedom of speech and they scold Muslims even for peaceful protest. Furthermore, European Muslims who attacked the rightist Danish publication were themselves attacked by the European press for their seeming inability to assimilate into the ‘Western world’ and that if they were integrated properly they would not be offended by a direct assault against their faith - turning the targeted victim into the scorn of European newspapermen whom use the opportunity to once again smear the continent’s Muslims for their alleged inability to accept ‘Western’ values. That Muslim protest is moved by the same sense of dignity as Armenian efforts for international recognition of their tragedy is apparently not considered. Instead, whatever form it may acquire, it is made to be illegitimate and due to an innate, one surmises, backwardness and the failure of the people to accept more enlightened ‘Western’ values. Armenians and Jews have legal protection against even a disagreeing narrative and none of press’ self-described champions of freedom of speech (when Muslims are concerned) have challenged such laws.

This is blatant and opportunistic hypocrisy: to be sensitive to the sensibilities of one group to the point of codifying it in law and then to hold in contempt another group not for asking for the same legal protection, but for simply registering complaint. The self-righteousness of the West during the Danish episode is hollow.

Muslims should not feed into the West’s racist stereotypes and react violently to offenses, but the Western world needs to respect Muslim criticism of such racism and if it is interested in enlightening European Muslims then it should start be setting a noble example and rediscovering that freedom of speech means freedom of speech Full Stop.

And now the news story:

‘This cartoon is discriminatory,’ the prosecuting authority said of the sketch on the website of the Arab European League (AEL) which it said depicted the Nazi holocaust as a figment of Jewish imagination.

‘This is offensive to Jews as a group,’ said a statement.

Last month, Dutch prosecutors ordered the league to remove the cartoon from its website or face prosecution.

The cartoon was punishable, they found, ‘because it offends Jews on the basis of their race and/or religion’.

At the same time, prosecutors had announced they would not put far-right MP Geert Wilders on trial for distributing controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammad on his website.

It found those cartoons were not offensive towards Muslims, nor contributed to hatred, discrimination or violence against them.

The AEL, which had originally agreed to remove the cartoon from its website, decided to put it back in protest against this ruling which it described as unfair and incomprehensible.

‘Double standards are being applied,’ says a statement on the website of the league, which said it ‘stands for the rights of the Arab and Moslem communities in Europe’.

'Enlightened' Dutch prosecutors have not only taken it upon themselves to shield one select group of people from emotional discomfort wrought from the wrath of a cartoon on a website that group would not frequent, but they have also decided that while Jews are accorded immediate protection from offense (even if no Jewish groups register complaints) Muslims, on the other hand, get to have the fortunate of being told by a government agency whether they have been offended or not. For racist Europeans, Muslims are not even able enough to determine their own offense. Instead, a government panel will rule in their name that portraying the Islamic Prophet Muhammad with a turban shaped as a bomb is not offensive toward them. If such legal codes against hate speech are to exist, should it not be the prerogative of the targeted group to determine whether certain images and writings constitute hate? Apparently yes for all groups except Muslims. It is incredible to threaten prosecution against Muslims offending Jews in one breath and then in the next to drop such a case against a Dutch fascist because his akin distribution (both cases involve cartoons) are deemed not offensive by a non-Muslim body.

The hypocrisy knows no limits. Muslims needs to fight the prosecution, but on these grounds:

The world cannot apply selective indignation and censorship. It is a slippery slope to codes of speech akin to campus codes. Freedom of speech should be unrestricted and hate speech should be met with forceful, eloquent and honest prose.