There was a protest outside Google‘s offices in London yesterday. The protest being about the presence of that film clip, The Innocence Of Muslims, on YouTube. The demonstration is really an example of the way in which some people just haven’t quite grasped the concept of free speech.
Organiser Masoud Alam said: “Our next protest will be at the offices of Google and YouTube across the world. We are looking to ban this film. “This is not freedom of expression, there is a limit for that. This insult of the Prophet will not be allowed.”
I’m afraid that Mr. Alam has not quite managed to grasp this essential concept of a free society.
One of the speakers, Sheikh Faiz Al-Aqtab Siddiqui, told The Daily Telegraph: “Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people.
“Organisations like Google are key players and have to take responsibility for civility. You can’t just say it doesn’t matter that it’s freedom of speech. It’s anarchy.”
No, it is not anarchy for there are indeed rules about what can be said, where and when. But it is indeed freedom of speech and it does matter for that very reason.
The core of the group’s position is that free speech has gone too far when videos like this are acceptable. That attitude, protestors said, mean we have entered an “age of mockery”. Protestors therefore made a call for all religions to come together and develop an approach to this kind of material.
And there’s a very good example of why this freedom of speech idea, yes even pertaining to religion, is so vital.
Let us, just as an example, take one of the central tenets of the Islamic faith. That Mohammed was the Prophet we all know about. But it is also true that Islam specifically denies the divinity of Jesus Christ. He was a prophet, if not The Prophet, and he most definitely was not the Son of God nor did he have any form of divine status. Then we also have the various flavours of Christian churches the unifying idea behind which is that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and did have divine status (there are all sorts of interesting doctrinal differences about exactly what that divine status was but we can leave them aside for the present). We thus have each of two of the world’s major religions insisting upon, as an essential truth, something which the other one of the two insists cannot possibly be true. The divinity or not of Jesus C.
Now, you can clearly be entirely irreligious like myself and think that both are simply mistaken in their entire belief system. But even if we restrict ourselves to authorised religions there is no possible concept of approved speech which can contain both options. One which insists that Mohammed’s position as The Prophet, with Jesus as a more minor prophet, and the contrary position that Jesus was indeed the Redeemer and the Son of God. They are simply incompatible: it is not possible to protect the rights of Moslems to proclaim one and Christians the other while still insisting that people may not mock either or both beliefs.
Which is what brings us to this freedom of speech idea. Yes, there are restrictions upon it, the right to should “Fire” in a crowded theatre, incitement to immediate violence, even the laws of libel. But they are very specific limitations for very limited reasons. Beyond them anyone is allowed to say whatever it is that they wish. That’s just what freedom of speech means. I am indeed allowed to insult the religious beliefs of another (not that I do for I have manners but manners and the law are not the same thing at all). For the plain and simple reason that others are allowed to insult my beliefs as well.
Or to put it into a nutshell: we cannot ban people from insulting a religious figure like Mohammed. Because the very religious accolades that Islam affords to Mohammed are in and of themselves in direct contravention of the religious beliefs of billions of others. There is thus no way of protecting religious figures from insult without actually banning the very expression of religious beliefs themselves. Which is why we don’t do that and instead say that everyone can just say what they like: freedom of speech as we call it.