On Being an Equal-Opportunity Offender
A tangential point is that in Europe, where the cartoon controversy raged, the laws do not treat offensive images equally. If you say, depict or publish something that disparages Jews, you could end up in jail. If you say, depict or publish something that disparages Muslims or Arabs, you become a free-speech martyr. This obvious double standard was laid bare in Iran's cartoon contest, which duplicated Europe's cartoon charade but made as its object Jews. To the extent that protesting Muslims made this point, they were entirely correct.
Ideally, the law would make no "hate crime" exception, for Jews or Muslims or any other "protected" group. What is allowed by law, however, does not equate with what is right.
2 comments:
PREACH, brutha!
hey,
so my examples were bad, I did not want to try to show that there was a discrimination linked to the different results of these trials...(btw, it's not only in Europe that the Hezbollah channel was censored, also in the US). There is in the french law a precision that freedom of speech is tolerated up to the limit it encourages violence...for example, the hezbollah channel clearly did so...and in opposition, the cartoons were not depicted as encouraging direct violence against Muslims...My point was not to describe a different treatment...For example, famous French philosopher Alain Frinkielkraut (of jewish origin) 's interview on the suburb riots to a Israelian newspaper was censored in france because he referred to the problem as "ethno religious" and blamed the Muslim communities, that was deemed to incite violence...After if some lobbies from certain religious groups are more visible and organized to pressurize the govt, it's possible...it's even more common in the US...
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