Sex, Drugs, and Boredom

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by Peter G. Stromberg

Sometimes Tolerance Requires Politeness

The controversy over drawing Muhammad isn't only about rights

Published on May 21, 2010 by Peter G. Stromberg, Ph.D. in Sex, Drugs, and Boredom

Much of the discussion of the controversy over drawing images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad is framed in terms of rights, such as the right to free expression of one's religion and the right to free speech. As I understand it, Islam prohibits drawings of the prophet for similar reasons that Judaism and Christianity prohibit idolatry: a physical image of a divine figure is at odds with the fundamentally spiritual nature of the divine in the Abrahamic tradition. So, any image depicting Muhammad is blasphemous to some Muslims; practicing their religion entails objecting to such images. Americans (and many other Westerners) hold free speech as a sacred right; for them, any prohibition on, say, drawing an image of the Islamic prophet is an infringement on their sacred rights and is objectionable.

I'm not sure this conflict can be resolved when approached in this way. Sure, plenty of non-Islamic Americans will say there's an easy solution, namely: "Muslims don't have to look at these images." But in fact that's not really a solution, because Islam defines the images themselves as morally offensive. Suppose Joe enjoys looking a child pornography, and when we object Joe says, "if you don't like it, don't look at it." The problem with Joe's response is that our society regards child pornography as morally offensive in and of itself. If you find something deeply morally offensive, you want to eliminate it, not just look the other way. The fact is, there is a direct conflict here between religious and free speech rights, and this conflict is not going to go away.

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That is why I suggest approaching this as a matter of politeness rather than rights. Yes, Americans and Danes have the political right to draw pictures of Muhammad, but doing so is insensitive, inflammatory and rude, and those are perfectly good reasons not to do it. Another analogy: Suppose you have a friend who has recently lost a child to cancer. You have every right to make cancer jokes to your friend, to rib him about his tears, to tell him to just get over it. But you don't choose to exercise these rights (I hope) because to do so would be insensitive, inflammatory, and rude. In short, even if you have the right to do so, there are plenty of other reasons not to say or do certain things.

When people have strong feelings about something, it is simple human decency to try and respect those feelings. Of course, it could happen that one person's strong feelings seriously impinge upon the rights of others, and in that case politeness is not the most important consideration. These matters have to be considered on a case by case basis. But for my money, exercising the right to draw somebody else's prophet is not worth being rude to them.

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