The row over cartoons of Mohammed the Prophet published in a Danish newspaper some weeks ago is now reaching a veritably international acme. Protestors across the Muslim world seethe, proclaiming death sentences against the Danish Prime Minister, phoning in bomb threats to newspapers, and
burning Danish flags from Riyadh to Gaza city.
Meanwhile, newspapers across Europe from Spain to France to Germany are rallying to the defense of the Danish newspaper and the freedom of the press by themselves publishing cartoons of Mohammed. One French newspaper even ran a front-page caricature of the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim deities under a headline that explained blasphemy against any and all faiths has long been a protected right in every democracy and will always be covered under the aegis of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Rendering an image of Mohammed is explicitly forbidden in Islam.
Some less pyrotechnically-inclined French Muslims have now responded with a very interesting proposition. One prominent Muslim theologian in France explained that “Freedom of speech must be balanced against the freedom to protect the sacred,” (BBC News, February 1).
Perhaps he is right. Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that the “freedom to protect the sacred” was for some reason omitted from the European and North American lists of protected rights and freedoms, we need only look to our campus to verify the theologian’s assertion: here the sacred has certainly
not been receiving its due desert.
For example, what of the sacred role of the Man as the paterfamilias the respected head of the household, model for his son, protector of the chastity and honour of his daughter? Our faculty of Arts and Science with its unrestrained Women’s Studies department has certainly here failed to respect the sacred.
What of our LGBT campus organizations? So much for respecting the sacredness of heterosexuality. Can we expect free screenings of Brokeback Mountain any day now? What of University College, which holds a social where participants are invited to attend in beachwear? How callous they are as they ride roughshod over the sacredness of female moderation. And this is to say nothing of a student body whose favourite television show is American Idol.
Yes, it turns out that the theologian is correct after all. We should have the freedom to protect the sacred. We should have the freedom to protect the sacred status of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion (which includes the right to any religion or to no religion), and the sacred
status of freedom from violence or threats of violence.
These rights are not unlimited, but then again, no one is claiming that publishing a cartoon is analogous to yelling “Fire!” in a crowed theatre, no matter how many Western cinemas are threatened with arson as a response.
And why are these things sacred and not the others? Because in 1982, Canadians operating through a democratic process said that they should be, and they entrenched them in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Other countries have done the same. We should have the freedom to protect the sacred, and in democratic societies the status of sacred is conferred by reason and consent, not by revelation and intimidation.
I thus urge this newspaper to show solidarity with its European counterparts, with our besieged democratic freedoms, by publishing cartoons of Mohammed, of Moses, of Jesus, and of any other figure which acolytes misuse in order to attempt to establish their exclusive hegemonic dominion over the realm of the sacred.
