David Irving is jailed for three years for Holocaust Denial

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2049360,00.html

I think this is a dreadful judgement for what it means for freedom of speech no matter how offensive.

I personally believe that the line over freedom of speech should be drawn at speech which threatens accidental or deliberate harm on others, therefore speech and opinion that while deeply offensive does not threaten harm on others should be allowed. This includes Irving’s Holocaust Denial.

There are two other specific reasons why I deplore this judgement

1) It creates an unintentional hypocrisy after many European Nations rightly deplored Islamic reaction to the depiction of the prophet Mohammad as an unwarranted attempt at restricting freedom of speech.

2) Restriction of something even as deeply offensive as holocaust denial cuts against the notion that one of the best ways to deal with bad ideas entered into the boulevard of opinion is to allow it to be subjected to the intellectual and factual dissection (and in the case of really bad ideas, intellectual razing to the ground) the rest of society can subject it to. Locking people up for bad ideas also gives those ideas a cache and sense of martyrdom that those ideas don’t deserve, meaning that the burial that those ideas would have had received in an unrestricted public forum now simmer away unresolved to be picked up at a later date by the disaffected and the politically ambitious who will seek to make a cause celebre out of it's rebel status.

David Irving was shocked that he was locked away and rightly so, it is surprising that in this day and age that a modern European State such as Austria can be as doggedly censorious and prescriptive as this. But then again Austria has never been on the right side of Holocaust history and perhaps the one (erroneous) justification that the Austrian government can give for this law is a fear that public expressions of such an opinion might bring out the underlying racism that doesn’t lie that far under the surface of Austrian society.

New Zealand newspaper publishes cartoons of Mohammad

Interesting, the Dominion Post, New Zealands second largest daily newspaper has decided to post the cartoon in full. I will be interested to see at this stage what the backlash will be.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3561502a12,00.html

This was the accompanying editorial that went with the republication of the cartoon:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3562143a1861,00.html

Quote:
The precious right of freedom of speech

04 February 2006

Modern society rests on the contest of ideas, the ability to question perceived wisdom and to challenge authority, The Dominion Post writes in an editorial. Without that contest, and the right to free speech that makes it possible, societies stultify and become entrenched in their beliefs. That freedom to question and to challenge must include the right to be offensive, to affront people's most heartfelt beliefs, even to disparage that which they hold sacred. Otherwise it is an empty freedom.

Our decision to publish the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (Jutland Post) at the centre of the escalating row between the Muslim world and the nations of the West is not one that the newspaper has taken lightly. However, in the clash of values at the centre of the dispute not to publish because of fear of disturbing the sensibilities of Muslims would be to give way in the face of bullying threats. That is what Muslims are seeking to have the Western democracies do with their threats of bombs and trade boycotts. There is no doubt that Muslims find the portrayal of the Prophet offensive. The Koran is clear that the slander and mockery of Islam and prayer crosses a sacred boundary, and warns that those who cross that boundary will be hurled into "crushing disaster". Mufti Abdul Barkatullah, a member of the British Muslim Council, calls it a no-go area at any cost, adding "the Prophet is held above everything in the universe, over one's own person, family, parents, the whole world. It is less offensive to condemn and vilify God". That is certainly true – for Muslims.

However Denmark, and the other countries where the cartoons have been reproduced, including in Britain by the BBC and in newspapers in France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Germany, are not Muslim countries. They are democratic, secular countries which are not ruled by religious dogma, whether it be Muslim or Christian. They have the same values as New Zealand, which includes the right to free speech in its Bill of Rights. There is an acceptance that people can write and say what they wish – except in tightly defined circumstances – even if others are offended by it, and that being shocked can be part of the price for being informed. The Muslim case is not helped by the hypocrisy when it comes to respecting the religious values of others. No doubt many fundamentalist Christian Americans find it deeply offensive for their country to be constantly labelled the Great Satan. And, as the German newspaper Die Welt pointed out when it published one of the cartoons, "when Syrian television showed drama documentaries in prime time depicting rabbis as cannibals, the imams were quiet". There have been earlier cultural confrontations between the West and a resurgent Islam, beginning with the death sentence pronounced in 1989 on author Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, and including the murder in 2004 of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh after he made a film dealing with violence against Islamic women. They are confrontations the West cannot afford to lose. The right to freedom of speech is a precious one that has to be defended. If there is a backlash in the form of boycotts then that could have a effect of New Zealands current buoyant economy as trade with the middle East in the form of providing halal meat and other agricultural goods is not insignificant.

If there is a backlash in the form of boycotts then that could have a effect of New Zealands current buoyant economy as trade with the Middle East in the form of providing halal meat and other agricultural goods is not insignificant.

EXTREMISTS in LONDON

I had some spare time after a meeting this afternoon to sneak away to the Danish Embassy to witness the protests against the Danish Embassy for the cartoons illustrating the prophet Mohammad.

When I arrived about 2.30pm it all looked singularly unimpressive with a small number of protesters waving banners in Arabic on the opposite side of the street away from the embassy with both media who were positioned outside the embassy facing the protesters and police marshalling the protesters and the traffic out in much greater numbers. With not much going on I took a walk down a side street in what is a very attractive part of London (Knightsbridge/South Kensington) and spotted a lovely Presbyterian Scottish Church to duck into to escape the cold. After having had a good look around and being warmed up a bit I went back out to have another look at the protests, initially it was the same scene as I had left it and after five minutes I had just about decided to scoot back to the office when there was a sudden escalation in police activity with the arrival of four extra police vans and a rapid unloading of extra barricades alerting us that something was up and sure enough I heard the sounds of what turned out to be a much larger protest coming down towards the embassy from the direction of Regents Park. I crossed the road and headed down the side street where the sounds of the protest was coming from before the police had the chance to block off that access road, Although I walked parallel to the police along with some other bystanders and media no one tried to stop us or turn us back.

Before I turned the corner of the side street the protest was upon us with a sizable number of Muslim men and women turning the corner surrounded by police waving banners written in English and all yelling and chanting abuse and threats at the top of their voice. I then decided to get a closer look at the signs, so I got off the side of the road and walked amongst them with my notepad recording what I reading and hearing. Here are some of the examples that many of the signs said:

“Kill the Kaffir”
“Behead those who insult Islam”
“Butcher those who mock Islam”
“Kill those who insult the prophet”
“Liberalism go to hell”
“Free speech go to hell”
“You dug your grave, lie in it”
“Europe, we will make you pay”
“Europe you will pay, 3/11 is on its way”
“Europe you will come crawling when the Muhajadin come roaring!”
“UK 7/7 is on the way”
“Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer”
“Be prepared for the real holocaust”and many other similar pleasantries…

Once these group of protesters joined up with the original protesters they stopped and a group of men on top of a small cart started addressing the crowd and the Danish embassy through a loud hailer (when I say “address” I mean more “scream at the top of his lungs”) Bits of his “speech” if you could call it that include: “Denmark you will pay, the Muslims are on their way”. “Those people responsible for this insult should be handed over by the disbelievers to be punished” “There is only one punishment, one punishment that is suitable for insulting our beloved prophet and that is death, death, there is no other way!” “We will always dominate, we will always dominate and we will rule every corner of the world”

The surreal thing about all of this, is that while all of this tirade is going on, and the most astonishing threats and insults are being made, the police stand there, the media stand there and members of the public stand there and say nothing, although a few whipped out their mobiles to take some photographs. After the address had finished everybody mills about for a while and I walk amongst them recording what I can. It struck me how many women protesters were there and I stood by as a woman addressed a bunch of her “sisters” to line up and march behind their brothers by saying “sisters, lets show them that we will not be mocked by disbelievers”. I listened to two of the protesters trying to establish if the embassy next to the Danish embassy was Norwegian or Peruvian, luckily for whoever embassy it was, they decided that the flag outside that embassy was probably “not Norwegian”. The male protesters then lined up and began their daily prayer ritual bending over on their knees in unison. This continued for a while and at that point I decided to leave with not much else looking to happen at that point.

As for my thoughts on it, I have never seen anything quite like it, even though I have witnessed quite a number of angry protests over my political career to date. I have never witnessed such visible anger, aggression, threats to perpetrate murder and ritual killings and mocking contempt towards our liberal, democratic traditions in my life. All carried out in a surreal atmosphere of bemused British bystanders observing a demonstration more reminiscent of the West Bank being perpetrated by people enjoying the freedoms and protection of the very institutions and traditions that they were threatening and mocking. For me, it was the personal experience of staring my enemy in the face and get a sense of the hate and the viciousness behind it (and let me be clear that by “enemy” I mean Militant Religion in general, and Militant Islam in particular, rather than any particular individuals who I have no wish to dehumanise on a personal level). It also revealed to me the disconnect between that mentality that suffers no insult, no shades of grey, no messy compromises with the things that we do not like, and that of the tolerance, respect and multiplicity of our much maligned liberal, secular, democratic traditions.

Today I witnessed those traditions being put under great pressure by those who openly espouse to hating it and I saw that tradition underlining by its actions, the truth of Voltaire’s maxim that underpins that tradition. That is, “I may hate what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it”. Seeing these police men and women guiding and protecting these people so that they could exercise their right to express how much they hate it, and us, is the ultimate test, and ultimate proof of the greatness of that tradition. But it still makes you whistle through your teeth at the spectacle of it.