Let's Make Some Noise

I'm sure y'all have heard about the Mohammed cartoon controversy that has caused violence or mass protest around the Muslim world. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (man, I really want to change my middle name -- Michael is so un-onomatopoeic!) wrote a piece in the International Herald Tribune last Friday on the subject. ( full article here)

an excerpt:

Reprinting the cartoons in order to make a point about free speech is an act of senseless brinkmanship. It is also a disservice to democracy. It sends a conflicting message to the Muslim community: that in a democracy, it is permissible to offend Islam.

This message damages efforts to prove that democracy and Islam go together. The average Muslim who prays five times a day needs to be convinced that the democracy he is embracing, and is expected to defend, also protects and respects Islam's sacred symbols. Otherwise, democracy will not be of much interest to him.

My first thought when I read this was that the prez doesn't know what he's talking about. It is permissible in democracy to offend the Muslim community or anybody else -- that's one thing that "freedom of speech" allows. So, maybe this proves that Islam and democracy don't mix well....

Upon further review, however, I decided that maybe he's not so far off the mark. After all, we in the Western world, for good or bad, also have our unoffendable groups -- gays, blacks, fat people, etc., etc. Look at John Rocker, the baseball pitcher. He got fined, suspended and ordered into psychological testing for the comments made in this Sports Illustrated article. Even after he came back, the stigma placed on him helped turn a young All-star caliber pitcher into a washout.

More recently, there's the preacher in Sweden who got convicted of violating hate crime laws for calling homosexuality a "cancerous tumor" on society during a sermon at his church. He was sentenced to a month in prison. (the conviction was overturned on appeal, and the Swedish Supreme Court upheld the decision of the appeals court.)

Meanwhile, it seems like its perfectly fine or even expected to trash some groups --mainstream religions, "rednecks", people with "unacceptable" radical ideas, tall people :), etc. Last year, I went to a special exhibit at the International Spy Museum (which I highly recommend) about terrorism in the U.S. One section covered the Ku Klux Klan -- from its beginning through its heyday to its current state. These days it is pretty weak, but it still holds rallies and apparently uses non-violent means to promote its ideas. At the end of that section, a computer survey questioned people about their views of the KKK and freedom of speech. The survey results showed that almost everyone believed strongly in freedom of speech, but I was a little surprised to see that more than 80 percent of the survey-takers would outlaw white supremacist groups, even those that are non-violent. Now, I'm no fan of the KKK, but should they be criminalized for their ideas? Does everyone have a right to free speech and thought?

In Western democratic practice, it seems like the ones who are truly protected are the ones who scream the loudest (or get one of the "professionally offended" to scream for them). If that's the case, maybe these violent Muslim protesters have the right idea after all....

What do you think?