This week, I have been challenged on my view that while Muslims, or anyone else for that matter, are fully entitled to take offence at something that is written or drawn about them or their faith, taking offence is as far as it is morally acceptable for them to go.
Nothing that has happened in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the north-western suburbs of Paris, Nice or other locations where fanatics decide to arm themselves with knives or firearms to commit cowardly attacks on innocents, shakes that belief.
I have seen tweets in French, English and Arabic expressing profound love for the Prophet Mohammed, a sentiment I applaud, and treating as sworn enemies those who would appear to show disrespect, an attitude I deplore.
And I have read the arguments of those, French and British, who broadly support the idea of defending the principle of freedom of expression but think the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo goes too far with its caricatures.
My estimable friend and confrere John Lichfield wrote after the barbaric killing of the history teacher Samuel Paty on October 16:
'Why such devotion to these drawings? Why is it now impossible for any French political leader to say, as Chirac did in 2006, that it is not a good idea to “hurt the convictions” of people of faith?
The answer is partly that the drawings have been consecrated in blood as symbols of France’s commitment to freedom of expression and its status as a secular Republic. They have become (paradoxically) secular, religious symbols - far beyond their intrinsic worth as either drawings or jokes.
Like much of what Charlie Hebdo produces, they are not especially well-drawn or funny or wise. Their original power came from their willingness to defy a taboo (and a fatwa) and defend the boundaries of France’s right to freedom of expression.'
I agree with John. Charlie Hebdo is not, in my view, remotely racist or Islamophobic (it mocks all religion). It can be incisive and witty but is frequently crude and even cruel.
Yet I remain firm in my outlook. We can regret or resent what is published but we cannot resort to self-appointed lynch law.
The freedom to say and write what we wish does not exist at all in certain parts of the world and already has sensible limits in democratic western society.
But where it is enshrined in law or constitution, then the only decent position its critics can take is to seek, peacefully, to change the law and/or constitution.
No one entering, say, Pakistan or Qatar is unaware that defying or disobeying prevailing domestic law can lead to big trouble.
If a Filipina maid or English oil worker is flogged in Saudi Arabia for acts that would not even be offences in their own countries, we do not march as a lawless rabble on the London diplomatic missions of those countries, or campaign for boycotts of their exports. We disapprove.
Quite rightly, incitement to crime - not just violent crime but hatred, too - is punishable in law in France as in the UK.
In France, as elsewhere though not in the UK, Holocaust denial is a criminal offense. Publishing a pamphlet calling for pre-emptory or retaliatory attacks on Muslims or mosques, or on Jews and synagogues, Catholics and their churches and so on, would also lead perpetrators to courts of law and it would be outrageous if it did not. Those feeling defamed have legal remedies, too.
It should not even be necessary to proceed from that point to a declaration that no level of disrespect allows threats or harm to another individual, or committing criminal damage, to be considered an appropriate sanction.
Precious few people, thank heavens, believe that it does. But among a small minority who think otherwise, a tiny one is ready to resort to hideously violent and murderous acts and they are not too fussy when choosing their targets.
Islamists have no monopoly on brainless psychopathy. If you doubt that statement, consider high-profile crimes against blacks in the USA, Muslims in New Zealand and the children of socialists in Norway.
But it is true to say that most terrorism in the world seems currently to be committed by people who falsely assert to be acting in Islam's name. No intelligent Muslim leader or moderate Muslim believer feels other than contempt for that handful of criminals ready to chant allahu akbar while satisfying their blood lust. Each terrorist demeans his (or, much more rarely, her) cherished faith and ensures continuing and escalating tension and distrust between Muslims and non-Muslims.
President Emmanuel Macron is currently a hate figure for people in certain countries, denounced as anti-Muslim by those who have never read A single word he has written or spoken. They will never understand that to be anti-Islamism - as are most Muslims - is not to be anti-Islam.
I have no quick answers, still less do I have ones liable to succeed. Somehow, however, we have to find a way of making people of all religions and none live side by side in mutual tolerance, accepting our differences and building on that which unites us.
Here are a few items I have written, three of them this week and the last a discussion of the issue of free speech that lies behind recent attacks in France:
* A French champion of Islam defends his country's secular attachment to the liberty of expression: https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/jack-lang-end-the-boycotts-to-build-trust-with-france-1.1100162
- Macron's challenge as the Nice attack adds to France's catalogue of terror: https://twitter.com/Independent/status/1321845809097428995
- * Nice mourns its dead: https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/nice-mourns-after-attack-by-warped-terrorist-1.1102378
- And much earlier ..
- When does rhetoric cross the line?: https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/when-does-fierce-rhetoric-become-incitement-1.168144
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