Freedom of speech will never be silenced by violence

Image by via Flickr

Madari Pendas | Contributing Writer

opinion@fiusm.com

On Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015 the office of the humor magazine Charlie Hebdo was attacked by radical islamists and twelve people, including a police officer, were murdered. The magazine was targeted because of its cartoons depicting the image of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, an act not explicitly forbidden in the Quran, but some hadiths, additional materials, forbid the visual depiction of any leaders or figures.

A lot of magazines and newspapers showed solidarity by reprinting some of the cartoons created by the Charlie Hebdo staff. However, none of the major American networks, like The New York Times, have re-printed any of the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo published, despite the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest telling media organizations that “individual news organization have to assess that risk for themselves. I might add, there are also journalists who assume great personal risk to cover stories…so there is a risk assessment made in lots of decisions journalists make.”

The mainstream news organizations in the United States are afraid of printing anything that could be deemed anti-islamic for fear of retaliation, often they will say their refusal is out of cultural sensitivity; however other religions like Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism are easily and often criticized and lampooned. This is a blatant hypocrisy in the American media system that legitimizes violence and terrorism.

Charlie Hebdo’s Editor-in-Chief Gerard Biard, who was absent the day of the attacks, criticized the United States for not reprinting any of the cartoons and not defending freedom of expression. “It’s a symbol of freedom of speech, freedom of democracy and secularism…It is this symbol newspapers refuse to publicize when they refuse to publish this cartoon. They blur it out, they blur out democracy, secularism and freedom of religion and they insult the citizenship.”

There are some who will say that the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo were offensive and should not have been printed. First and foremost “offensive” is subjective, everyone has different sensibilities, and no one person or group of persons can be the morality police for the world. Even if the cartoons were offensive, that does not warrant the use of violence. No cartoonist or writer should lose their life over a satirical cartoon. We are now living in a world where the people with the most courage and valiance are the writers and cartoonist–the most powerful agents of social critique and reform.

However, in regards to the events concerning Charlie Hebdo, Pope Francis condemned the actions of the magazine saying, “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith; one cannot make fun of faith. If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal.”

This is absolutely incorrect and an encroachment on freedom of expression and on the freedom to lambaste any institution, including religious institutions. It is not normal or justified to punch someone because they have provoked you. Violence is not the tool used when one is offended or wants to send a message–that is terrorism, using violence to achieve a means.

The Pope later said, “There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity…in freedom of expression there are limits.” Yes, there are some limits to freedom expression, for instance, shouting “fire” in a crowded theater and using hate speech to incite violence are not protected by the right to free speech–those are instances where speech is limited; but social critiques of a religion do not receive special protection. Any religion is open to criticism, no institution gets a safe haven from ridicule. Any special treatment to one religion is an expression of inferiority to all other belief systems. Biard stated, “Every time we draw a cartoon of Muhammad or the prophet or of God, we defend the freedom of religion…We declare God must not be political or public figure, he must be a private figure. If faith steps into the political arena, it becomes a totalitarian argument. Secularism allows all believers and non-believers to live in peace, and that is what we defend.”

I tried to refrain from quoting South Park, but in the two part episode “Cartoon Wars,” Kyle Broflovski says, “Either it’s all okay or none of it is,” in regards to depicting an image of Mohammed. Once a person says an image cannot be shown or is offensive, that person or group has made a moral judgement for everyone, and not everyone might feel an image is offensive, they have played censure for the populace. Showing an image of Muhammad is not offensive to all Muslims, but the vocal and violent majority are the ones saying it is offense, they are attempting to speak for all Muslims.  Self imposed censorship and kowtowing to terrorists shows how easily freedom can be inhibited and threatened. The goal of a satirist is to mock the propriety, to keep the elite in check and fallible.