EU
EU Observer Opinion Charlie's false friends
23/01/15 12:05
“...This logic is both weasely and contradictory.
If freedom of speech means anything, it means having the right to mock ideas that are open to mockery – whether Christianity, Islam, fascism, communism, Euroscepticism or EU federalism. It also means having the right to offend those who offend you – whether representatives of religions that preach peace while sanctioning slaughter or those that eulogise equality while enslaving women.
“It’s impossible to know all the limits and taboos of every individual in society if you want to follow the ‘do not offend’ rule,” Flemming Rose told me earlier this week.
“It will lead to a tyranny of silence.” Rose, who first commissioned cartoons of Mohammed almost 10 years ago when an editor at Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, adds: “I think respect, like tolerance, is one of the most abused words. People turn these concepts on their heads in order to intimidate people with whom they disagree.”
It is a tactic that appears to be working...”
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If freedom of speech means anything, it means having the right to mock ideas that are open to mockery – whether Christianity, Islam, fascism, communism, Euroscepticism or EU federalism. It also means having the right to offend those who offend you – whether representatives of religions that preach peace while sanctioning slaughter or those that eulogise equality while enslaving women.
“It’s impossible to know all the limits and taboos of every individual in society if you want to follow the ‘do not offend’ rule,” Flemming Rose told me earlier this week.
“It will lead to a tyranny of silence.” Rose, who first commissioned cartoons of Mohammed almost 10 years ago when an editor at Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, adds: “I think respect, like tolerance, is one of the most abused words. People turn these concepts on their heads in order to intimidate people with whom they disagree.”
It is a tactic that appears to be working...”
Read more