OFF: Freeedom of Speech

[M Holmes]

Carl Edlund Anderson writes:

> Mind you, had I been the editor of the Danish newspaper, I might well
> have decided running those cartoons might not be in the interests of the
> business, regardless of my legal right to do so

Which would be self-censorship.

The backstory is that a guy who happened to work for the newspaper
was writing a children's book on the life of Muhammed. He'd asked
several folks to illustrate this and found that they all demurred. This
led him to do a piece for the paper on self-censorship, in which a wide
call went out for cartoons top illustrate either self-censorship, or how
the cartoonists thought the West saw Muslims. They chose the best 12and
they were published in September.

Some Danish Imams got their knickers in a twist about it but nobody was
interested. They took their complaints to the Middle-east and an
Egyptian newspaper printed all 12 (an Egyptian libertarian has the
newspaper and sent scans as evidence) in October. This didn't even get a
letter to the editor. Then the Imams produced (or simply copied from elsewhere
- there are different stories here) three more cartoons:

1. Picture of Muhammed with pig snout and ears (there's a claim going
   that this is in fact taken from some strange Pig Imitation competition
   in the US or France).

2. Picture of a woman in full hajib(?) kneeling in prayer and being
   fucked by a dog.

3. Picture of Muhammed crushing children in his hands and the legend
   "Muhammed is a Paedophile".

The Imams managed to get on Jordanian TV hawkwind a booklet with the
original 12 and these three pictures claiming that this was what was
being published in Europe. Until last week they refused to answer the
Danish government on where the three fake pictures came from. Last week
one broke ranks and admitted what they'd done.

The rest, as they say, is history. Not a particularly wise way for holy
men to act, and they've now produced about two dozen deaths as well as
all the other trouble we've seen on the news. It's reasonably clear that
they've manipulated both sides in order to stir up this trouble.

It's doubtful they could be charged with anything in Europe. It'snot
impossible that they could be charged in the Middle-East, but that would
require some fairly high-profilepeople to admit they'd been duped,or
worse,that they'd encouraged riots without ever having seen the
pictures, let alone confirm that they were actually published.

I very much doubt that anyone less barking than the BNP would have been
willing to publish the cartoons of the alleged holy men. Perhaps when it
comes down to it, good taste is merely another form of self-censorship.

FoFP