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Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the (potential) right to be free from insult


Ser Scot A Ellison

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This is an interesting article from the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/they-are-not-charlie/2015/01/13/7c9d6998-9aae-11e4-86a3-1b56f64925f6_story.html

From the article:

GENNEVILLIERS, France Rather than fall quiet as requested during a national minute of silence last week, three boys in Hamid Abdelaalis high school class in this heavily Muslim suburb of Paris staged an informal protest, speaking loudly through all 60 seconds.

Across France, they were not alone. In one school in Normandy, some Muslim students yelled God is great! in Arabic during that same moment. In a Paris middle school, another group of young Muslims politely asked not to respect the minute, arguing to their teacher, You reap what you sow.

Abdelaali, a 17-year-old high school senior who did observe the quiet minute, said he did so only because he was outraged by the killings in the name of his religion that were carried out at Charlie Hebdo the satirical French newspaper attacked by Islamist extremists. But he also said he feels disgusted by a newspaper whose provocative cartoons had used the image of the prophet Muhammad for satire and which continued to do so in its tragicomic first edition hitting newsstands Wednesday morning. I know some kids who agreed with the attack, he said. I did not, but I also cannot say that I support what Charlie Hebdo is doing.

Some insisted there is a double standard in freedom of speech and expression here that is bias against Islam. They cite the 2010 so-called burqa ban in France that forbade concealment of the face in public, and which Muslim critics say was clearly aimed at devout Islamic women. They also point to the 2008 firing of a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Maurice Sinet, known as Siné after he declined to apologize for a column that some viewed as anti-Semitic. Such action was not taken, Muslim groups note, after their protests over the papers Muhammad cartoons.

Almost 4 million people across France turned out Sunday in support of free speech. Yet, on Monday, for instance, a 31-year-old Tunisian-born man was sentenced to 10 months in jail after verbally threatening police and saying an officer shot in last weeks attack deserved it. Also on Monday, a Paris prosecutor opened an investigation against an anti-Semitic French comedian, Dieudonné Mbala Mbala, for a post on his Facebook page calling himself Charlie Coulibaly a reference to Amedy Coulibaly, the gunmen who killed four people Friday inside a Paris kosher market.

This is an interesting dynamic. People have the right to freely express their opinions. That includes the opinion that what Charlie Hebdo was publishing is deeply offensive to religious Muslims and that they should not be publishing these types of cartoons. However, what I dont believe people have is a right to be free from insult. My Christian religious beliefs do not give me the right to tell an artist that submerging a crucifix in urine is offensive and should not be tolerated.

A civil society cannot long endure when people are given the right to use force or the force of law to silence people who they believe are offensive. I think Blue Laws are problematic for the same reason. These are laws forcing businesses to close at certain times to satisfy the religious peccadilloes of some people. Thats wrong.

People need to understand that the right to freely exercise your religious faith does not include the right to be free from insult and the right to have everyone agree with your point of view.

Does anyone disagree?

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I don't disagree, but I think it's interesting where societies draw the line between insult and criminal offence. Burning or desecrating national flags is illegal in many major Western countries, including in France (under some circumstances). That seems like a bit of a double standard - why should it be okay to misuse a central symbol of a religion, but not a central symbol of a nation?


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No, I'm absolutely with you. The right to freedom of speech and expression is basically a nice way of saying "You're allowed to offend anyone". Satire in particular should be allowed to depict anything, precisely because it is aimed at offending people.



That said, sometimes there are sometimes limits to free speech. E.g., in my country, holocaust denial is forbidden. And while I generally come down on the side of free speech in those cases, I'm quite conflicted about that one because of our history.


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I thought the whole point of freedom of speech is to protect unpopular speech.



Also I thought that flag burning was legal in the United States. Maybe it varies by state? I could be misremembering but I thought there was a supreme court case about it at one point.


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This is an interesting article from the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/they-are-not-charlie/2015/01/13/7c9d6998-9aae-11e4-86a3-1b56f64925f6_story.html

From the article:

This is an interesting dynamic. People have the right to freely express their opinions. That includes the opinion that what Charlie Hebdo was publishing is deeply offensive to religious Muslims and that they should not be publishing these types of cartoons. However, what I dont believe people have is a right to be free from insult. My Christian religious beliefs do not give me the right to tell an artist that submerging a crucifix in urine is offensive and should not be tolerated.

A civil society cannot long endure when people are given the right to use force or the force of law to silence people who they believe are offensive. I think Blue Laws are problematic for the same reason. These are laws forcing businesses to close at certain times to satisfy the religious peccadilloes of some people. Thats wrong.

People need to understand that the right to freely exercise your religious faith does not include the right to be free from insult and the right to have everyone agree with your point of view.

Does anyone disagree?

I find the claim that civil society "cannot long endure" when there exist legal prohibitions against certain types of offensive speech to be curious.

"Civil society" has existed in most societies for thousands upon thousands of years, despite the existence of just such laws. Germany and France have civil societies despite also having prohibitions against Holocaust denial and other topics. China has a civil society even though it has far more restrictions on freedom of speech.

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I see nobody referencing a right to not be insulted in your article, only children saying that insults have consequences, and others wondering about a double standard in the attacks against one confession or another. Right stems from law, nobody invokes the law here or I missed it.

As far as the law goes, you actually can get sued, in France, for insulting, demeaning content. Charlie Hebdo has been sued multiples times like that. For the famous caricature, the tribunal ruled in favour of Charlie, holding that they were beneficial to the public sphere (to sum up). The actual problem I see pointed in the article is that many do not refer to the law to determine who "deserves" the consequences of their insults.

Oh, also, about "enduring": Laws against antisemitic speeches have existed for like 70 years now in Germany or France.

I don't disagree, but I think it's interesting where societies draw the line between insult and criminal offence. Burning or desecrating national flags is illegal in many major Western countries, including in France (under some circumstances). That seems like a bit of a double standard - why should it be okay to misuse a central symbol of a religion, but not a central symbol of a nation?

Because, as established during the revolution, religion is an opinion whether nationality is not, and the nation is separate and above religious movements?
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Nestor,

Well, I suppose the crux is how "civil society" is defined. I would not consider a society that limits political speech for it's "offensive" nature to a "civil society". I think freedom of expression is a fundamental protection that all civil societies should protect else, they are not, in my opinion "civil societies".

EB,

I think laws against Holocaust denial are wrong. My point is that "freedom from insult" is where some of those speaking out against the Charlie Hebdo caraciture seem to be going. That is problematic, at best, as I see it.

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I thought the whole point of freedom of speech is to protect unpopular speech.

Also I thought that flag burning was legal in the United States. Maybe it varies by state? I could be misremembering but I thought there was a supreme court case about it at one point.

You're correct, flag burning has been ruled Constitutionally protected by the Supreme Court. Some states may have statutes on the books against it, but they shouldn't be enforceable.

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Nestor,

Well, I suppose the crux is how "civil society" is defined. I would not consider a society that limits political speech for it's "offensive" nature to a "civil society". I think freedom of expression is a fundamental protection that all civil societies should protect else, they are not, in my opinion "civil societies".

That is a bizarre use of the word "civil society" which has traditionally been used to mean those elements of society that are not the government or business, such as the family, the private sphere, and non-financial associational relationships between people. To reduce the idea of "civil society" to a binary question about the mere existence of any single prohibition against politically offensive speech reduces the term to absolute meaninglessness. Are you seriously making the claim that there has never been a civil society in the entire world until (and arguably, at that) the incorporation of the First Amendment into application against the States? Which we could probably date to 1925 in Gitlow v. New York? Is that really your claim?

Because it seems to me that all you are doing is just answering the question by rephrasing your objection to legal restrictions on certain kinds of political speech in absurdly broad language. Presumably, when you say something like

"A civil society cannot long endure when people are given the right to use force or the force of law to silence people who they believe are offensive."

You actually intended to say something a little more nuanced than

"Because I choose to define civil society solely by virtue of the non-existence of such laws."

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EB,

I think laws against Holocaust denial are wrong. My point is that "freedom from insult" is where some of those speaking out against the Charlie Hebdo caraciture seem to be going. That is problematic, at best, as I see it.

If they're like the of people in your article and they're doing it by insulting others ...well, it's difficult to get worried y'know?

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Nestor,

Fair enough. Too absolute a position. Suffise it to say that I think freedom of expression is extremely important in maintaining an open society where even ideas that may give offense can be discussed in a frank and open manner. Is it an absolute necessity, perhaps not? But allowing it to be nibbled away due to religiously based objections seems a bad plan, in my opinion.

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Nestor,

Well, I suppose the crux is how "civil society" is defined. I would not consider a society that limits political speech for it's "offensive" nature to a "civil society". I think freedom of expression is a fundamental protection that all civil societies should protect else, they are not, in my opinion "civil societies".

EB,

I think laws against Holocaust denial are wrong. My point is that "freedom from insult" is where some of those speaking out against the Charlie Hebdo caraciture seem to be going. That is problematic, at best, as I see it.

Likely this is because as an American I am more insulated than those in Europe from the aftermath of WW2 and the holocaust... but I really have never understood laws against holocaust denial. Denial of the holocaust is a conspiracy theory that is fairly easily debunked and, in my mind, akin to talk about alien shadow governments and Sasquatch. Usually it is coming out of the mouth of someone who is pretty low on the old credibility scale. I don't like that sort of talk but I feel like I should have the right as a free person to hear whatever speech is out there and make up my mind for myself. I think its kind of silly that it is banned, the laws seem kind of dated at the least.

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Nestor,

Fair enough. Too absolute a position. Suffise it to say that I think freedom of expression is extremely important in maintaining an open society where even ideas that may give offense can be discussed in a frank and open manner. Is it an absolute necessity, perhaps not? But allowing it to be nibbled away due to religiously based objections seems a bad plan, in my opinion.

What about racial equality-based objections? I mean, if it's just people whining that happens in the States and it will work. If we're talking about the state grabbing people how many people were charged for anti-Semitism and a whole other host of issues compared to the number that were charged for insulting Islam?

Edit:Point is they're not heading into new territory. That land was charted already by the people who arrested others for being offensive

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I think laws against Holocaust denial are wrong.

But they are laws, and since that was what I was addressing, our societies have "endured" despite having those laws, thank you very much.

My point is that "freedom from insult" is where some of those speaking out against the Charlie Hebdo caraciture seem to be going. That is problematic, at best, as I see it.

I disagree that any of those I see in your article, or the many I heard directly on radio, TV or face to face are actually angling toward any *right* to be free from insult within the framework of the republic, or they would think about what it actually means in term of enforcement and law. What I see is that they can go as far as condoning murder because their law of reference is the religious one. That is of course extremely problematic, but it's not denoting a desire for a change in laws, only a faulty education/integration but in most cases merely anger at being insulted, which is normal and expected.

Also, not wanting to respect a minute of silence imposed to you when you did not know the victims, didn't share their opinions? I have no problem with that. Even Luz, one of the surviving artists, went violently against the idea of making the dead and the journal symbols to be imposed on the population. I sure would not respect an imposed minute of silence if, for example, the Fox News buffoons, who personally offend me, got murdered, even if my consternation at such a slaughter would be enormous.

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It is also important to distinguish prohibition of speech that gives offense on a social level versus speech that is prohibited based on political dissidence.

In China, we have both, to differing degrees. Political speech is much more suppressed in China than it is in the U.S. Here, political speech is almost entirely free, with the exceptions being inciting riots, libel, etc. Not so in China. But here in the U.S., there is clearly restriction on speech in terms of sexual and violent content, like in movies and lyrics. The restriction is less stringent for written words, but there's nevertheless some lines that are difficult to cross, if not legally then certainly culturally.

I think suppression of political speech is much scarier than suppression of cultural speech, although neither is good.

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Saladin Ahmed wrote a great article about free speech and satire.



http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/01/10/when-satire-cuts-both-ways/in-unequal-an-world-mocking-all-serves-the-powerful




"The question for writers and artists, then, is not whether we ought to limit ourselves, but how we already limit ourselves. In a field dominated by privileged voices, it's not enough to say "Mock everyone!" In an unequal world, satire that mocks everyone equally ends up serving the powerful. And in the context of brutal inequality, it is worth at least asking what preexisting injuries we are adding our insults to."


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Lukey,

But in the context of fatwas issued calling for the death of people who have insulted Islam and people being killed on that basis is it proper to call the people who died "priviledged" and condemn them for that perceived "priviledge"? These artists and other people who worked at Charlie Hebdo are not "priviledged" they're dead. That is moving, uncomfortably close, toward suggesting the attacks were somehow justified.

Condemning the fatwas without putting yourself at risk seems very weak sauce.

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I think laws against Holocaust denial are wrong. My point is that "freedom from insult" is where some of those speaking out against the Charlie Hebdo caraciture seem to be going. That is problematic, at best, as I see it.
I agree that this does seem to be the direction of travel for some for are criticizing Hebdo, and it's a concerning development. As one Rabbi pointed out in The Times (London) yesterday in response to the Pope's recent comments, one man seeing a punch as an appropriate reaction to an insult is not so different from another man picking up a Kalashnikov, regardless of the beliefs or motivations of those involved. Attempts by some to justify the use of violence in response to upset or offence should be of a concern to everyone regardless of whether they agree with the 'right' to insult or offend people.
With regards to freedom from insult, that is at least one interpretation of the law in the United Kingdom, which stipulates

(1)
A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he—
(a)uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b)displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.

While this law certainly hasn't been used to impose any sort of major crackdown on freedom of speech or expression it is still concerning, IMO, due to the breadth of the law and the room for interpretation involved. There is, I would argue a stark difference between threatening someone and merely insulting them. While there is a given defence for this offence that the act was "reasonable," it is probably fair to conclude that most people in danger of being charged under this law would be engaged in actions that the majority consider unreasonable, which seems to somewhat negate the point of protections for freedom of expression.

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Free speech is limited when threatening or defaming others. Holocaust denial, especially in the European context, is highly entangled with both so it makes some sense to have laws against it on the books.

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