Islam vs. Free Speech

"Amid widespread protests against an amateur movie that denigrates Islam's Prophet Mohammad," reports the Washington Times, at least one Muslim leader — with the backing of the 57 states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — wants the United Nations to criminalize blasphemy against his religion:

“We call for legislation or a resolution to criminalize contempt of Islam as a religion and its prophet,” Emad Abdel Ghaffour, who heads the ultra-orthodox [Egyptian] sect’s Nour political party, told Reuters over the weekend.

Jonah Goldberg writes about a recent parody, headlined "No One Murdered Because of This Image" in the faux-newspaper Onion, in which 4 "cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity." Missing was Islam's prophet Mohammed.

The Onion’s point should be obvious. Amidst all of the talk of religious tolerance and the hand-wringing over free speech in recent days, one salient fact is often lost or glossed over: What we face are not broad questions about the limits of free speech or the importance of religious tolerance, but rather a very specific question about the limits of Muslim tolerance and the unimportance of free speech to much of the Muslim world.

It’s really quite amazing. In Pakistan, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories, Christians are being harassed, brutalized, and even murdered, often with state support, or at least state indulgence. And let’s not even talk about the warm reception Jews receive in much of the Muslim world.

And yet, it seems you can’t turn on National Public Radio or open a newspaper or a highbrow magazine without finding some oh-so-thoughtful meditation on how anti-Islamic speech should be considered the equivalent of shouting “fire” in a movie theater.

But there is no equivalency, argues Goldberg. Muslims are people, not a force of nature. They have free will. They choose to riot.

There’s nothing wrong with exercising sound judgment, even caution, when it comes to offending another’s most cherished beliefs. But the First Amendment isn’t the problem here, the dysfunctions and inadequacies of the Arab and Muslim world are.

James Burnham famously said that when there is no alternative there is no problem. If free speech in America causes a comparative handful of zealots to want to murder Americans, the correct response is to protect Americans from those zealots (something the Obama administration abjectly failed to do in Libya) and relentlessly seek the punishment of anyone who succeeds. Because, as far as America is concerned, there is no alternative to the First Amendment.

If only we had national leadership who would defend Americans' cherished freedoms and beliefs as strongly.