'Je Suis Charlie' is a perfect example of hypocrisy and double standards

What you need to know:

  • Liberals argue that freedom of expression is sacrosanct and trumps all other freedoms because without the right to express oneself, all other rights are at risk.
  • It is highly hypocritical for the leaders of these countries to stand in solidarity with the French people while they censor or jail their own journalists or, in the case of Israel, bomb Palestinians, who are simply demanding the right to self-determination.
  • Britain and the United States also stand accused for spawning terrorist outfits such as the Islamic State after they invaded Iraq in 2003.

In the mid-1980s I witnessed a Ku Klux Klan march in the heart of Boston, one of the most liberal cities in the United States.

I was a student at the time and remember being extremely perplexed by the fact that Americans could allow this racist organisation to demonstrate.

Would such an organisation be allowed to exist if it vilified Jews or supported paedophilia? I wondered.

How was it possible, I asked my professor, that people could profess their racism in a country where blacks had fought a long and hard battle for their civil rights? How could Americans allow people to express such hate-filled opinions?

She explained that the First Amendment to the US constitution guaranteed freedom of expression, even if the views being expressed were abhorrent to the vast majority of Americans.

RIGHTS AT RISK

Liberals argue that freedom of expression is sacrosanct and trumps all other freedoms because without the right to express oneself, all other rights are at risk. However, should this freedom not come with responsibility? Should it not be sensitive to the prevailing culture and accepted norms?

The debate around the terrorist attacks in Paris has centred around the idea that freedom of expression is central to Western culture and must be protected at all cost. However, what if freedom of expression turns into hate speech? Should it then be curtailed?

As the world rallies around the 'Je Suis Charlie' movement, some people are asking whether the murdered cartoonists working for Charlie Hebdo magazine crossed a line that should not have been crossed.

Many of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in Charlie Hebdo are, in my opinion, not just in bad taste but highly provocative.

Would the world have supported Charlie Hebdo if the cartoons depicted the bare bottom of Jesus or the Hindu god, Rama?

The American journalist Glen Greenwald says that those who are now defending freedom of speech would be the first to ban or censor Charlie Hebdo if the people being caricatured were Jewish.

DOUBLE STANDARDS

If you attack Muslims, he says, that is free speech, but if you attack Jews, that is anti-Semitism. Indeed, despite its claim that it satirises all religions equally, in 2008 the magazine fired a cartoonist for writing an article that the editors viewed as anti-Semitic.

Support for France after the terror attacks exemplifies the West’s double standards. While no one in their right mind can condone the killing of unarmed people, it was not lost on many people, particularly in the Arab world, that many of the 40 leaders who showed up in Paris to participate in a massive march in support of freedom of expression have been waging a war against their own journalists.

Who can believe that the leaders of countries such as Israel, Bahrain, Turkey, Russia, and Egypt care about press freedom? Egypt is currently holding Al Jazeera journalists in its cells and Israel’s policies towards Palestine violate many human rights.

Many Arab countries participating in the march condone public floggings and deny women the most basic of rights.

HIGHLY HYPOCRITICAL

It is highly hypocritical for the leaders of these countries to stand in solidarity with the French people while they censor or jail their own journalists or, in the case of Israel, bomb Palestinians, who are simply demanding the right to self-determination.

Britain and the United States also stand accused for spawning terrorist outfits such as the Islamic State after they invaded Iraq in 2003.

The hypocrisy is evident even in the way France deals with its own religious establishment. In 2005, France’s Catholic Church won a court injunction to ban a clothing advertisement based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper depicting Jesus and his disciples as female fashion models.

In the Arab world, the most authoritarian regimes are being supported by the pro-Israel United States. While the US purports to support free speech at home, it is willing to look the other way when countries such as Saudi Arabia flog and jail people who question its ultra-conservative religious establishment (as it did recently), the very establishment that has given rise to the extremists who are now killing people in the name of Islam.