In Our Own Terms

Much has been said and written in the past few days regarding the infamous cartoons about the prophet Muhammad. For those who continue to side with the "freedom of the press" argument, and who still don't grasp what the big deal is all about, I would like to present the same situation in our own terms: Imagine for a moment a cartoon of Jesus asking a woman at a bar: "your place or mine?", or one of the Virgin Mary sunbathing at a nudist beach. Would they be legal? Sure. Would they be tasteless? No doubt about it.

I can't imagine what would happen in Israel if a Palestinian newspaper published a cartoon of Hitler lighting Hanukkah candles and having dinner with a Jewish family, and a week later four or five Middle Eastern countries reprinted the images to show solidarity with their fellow Palestinian journalists.

The relevance of these hypothetical situations is a matter of perception, yet it doesn't take much to realize where the line is and when it is being crossed. The press is free to publish what it wishes, but not to slap 1.7 billion Muslims in the face and then hide behind the "no censorship" banner. Freedom of the press is much too important to compromise it in such a careless manner. It is in fact an invaluable tool to promote Western ideas in non-western countries, and all this incident has done is to close even more doors for those struggling for free press inside authoritarian and radical regimes.