{"id":52429,"date":"2015-01-12T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=52429"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:03","slug":"in-solidarity-with-a-free-press-some-more-blasphemous-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/01\/in-solidarity-with-a-free-press-some-more-blasphemous-cartoons\/","title":{"rendered":"In Solidarity With a Free Press: Some More Blasphemous Cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"je<\/a><\/p>\n

Defending free speech and free press rights,\u00a0which typically means defending the right to disseminate the very ideas society finds most repellent, has been one of my principal<\/a> passions<\/a>\u00a0for the last 20 years:\u00a0previously<\/a>\u00a0as a<\/a> lawyer<\/a> and<\/a> now<\/a> as<\/a> a<\/a> journalist<\/a>. So I consider it positive when large numbers of people loudly\u00a0invoke this principle, as has been happening over the last 48 hours in response to the horrific attack on\u00a0Charlie Hebdo in Paris.<\/p>\n

Usually, defending free speech rights is much more of a lonely task. For instance, the day before the Paris murders, I wrote an article<\/a> about multiple cases\u00a0where Muslims are being\u00a0prosecuted and even imprisoned by western governments for their online political speech \u2013 assaults that have provoked\u00a0relatively little protest, including from those free speech champions who have been so vocal this week.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve previously covered cases where Muslims were imprisoned for many years in the U.S. for things like translating<\/a> and<\/a>\u00a0posting \u201cextremist\u201d videos<\/a> to the internet, writing scholarly articles<\/a> in defense of Palestinian groups and expressing harsh criticism of Israel<\/a>, and even including a Hezbollah channel<\/a> in a cable package. That\u2019s all well beyond the numerous cases of jobs being lost<\/a> or careers destroyed<\/a> for expressing criticism of Israel or (much more dangerously and rarely) Judaism. I\u2019m hoping this week\u2019s celebration of free speech values will generate widespread\u00a0opposition to all of these long-standing and growing\u00a0infringements of core political rights in the\u00a0west, not just some.<\/p>\n

\"iran1-222x300<\/a> Central to free speech activism has always been\u00a0the distinction between defending the right to disseminate Idea X and agreeing with Idea X, one which\u00a0only the most simple-minded among us<\/a>\u00a0are incapable of comprehending. One defends the right to express repellent ideas while being able to condemn the idea itself.\u00a0There is no remote contradiction in that: the ACLU vigorously defends<\/a> the right of neo-Nazis to march through a community filled with Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois, but does not join the march; they instead vocally condemn the targeted ideas as grotesque while defending the right to express them.<\/p>\n

But this week\u2019s defense of free speech rights was so spirited\u00a0that it gave rise to a brand new principle: to defend free speech, one not only defends the right to disseminate the speech, but embraces the content of the speech itself. Numerous writers thus demanded<\/a>: to show \u201csolidarity\u201d with the murdered cartoonists, one should not merely condemn the attacks and defend the right of the cartoonists to publish, but should publish and even celebrate those cartoons. \u201cThe best response to Charlie Hebdo attack,\u201d announced<\/a>\u00a0Slate\u2019s<\/em> editor Jacob Weisberg, \u201cis to escalate blasphemous satire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"isil-540x771<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the cartoons published by\u00a0Charlie Hebdo were not just offensive but bigoted<\/a>, such as the one mocking the African sex slaves of Boko Haram as welfare queens (left). Others went far beyond maligning violence by extremists acting in the name of Islam, or even merely depicting Mohammed with degrading imagery (above, right), and instead contained a stream of mockery toward Muslims generally, who in France are not remotely powerful but are largely a\u00a0marginalized and targeted immigrant population<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But no matter. Their cartoons were noble and should be celebrated \u2013 not just on free speech grounds but for their content. In a column<\/a> entitled \u201cThe Blasphemy We Need,\u201d\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u2018 Ross Douthat argued that \u201cthe right to blaspheme (and otherwise give offense) is essential to the liberal order\u201d and \u201cthat<\/em>\u00a0kind of blasphemy [that provokes violence] is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because it\u2019s the kind that clearly serves a free society\u2019s greater good.\u201d\u00a0New York Magazine<\/em>\u2018s Jonathan Chait actually proclaimed<\/a> that \u201cone cannot defend the right [to blaspheme] without defending the practice.\u201d Vox\u2019s Matt Yglesias had a much more nuanced view but nonetheless concluded<\/a> that \u201cto blaspheme the Prophet transforms the publication of these cartoons from a pointless act to a courageous and even necessary one, while the observation that the world would do well without such provocations becomes a form of appeasement.\u201d<\/p>\n

To comport with this new principle for how one shows\u00a0solidarity with free speech rights and a\u00a0vibrant\u00a0free press, we\u2019re publishing some blasphemous and otherwise offensive cartoons about religion and their adherents:<\/p>\n

Please Go to Original to see the many offensive cartoons \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To comport with this new principle for how one shows solidarity with free speech rights and a vibrant free press, we\u2019re publishing some blasphemous and otherwise offensive cartoons about religion and their adherents:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}