Satirical religious cartoons should be illegal, says Ottawa imam and reactions
2015/01/13 5 Comments
From one of the preferred interlocutors of the Government in the Canadian Muslim community:
Imtiaz Ahmed, an imam with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, said it should be against the law to publish cartoons that depict religious figures in a derogatory way.
“Of course we defend freedom of speech, but it has to be balanced. There has to be a limit. There has to be a code of conduct,” Ahmed said.
“We believe that any kind of vulgar expression about any sacred person of any religion does not constitute the freedom of speech in any way at all.”
Ahmed said there should be limits placed on freedom of speech to prevent the publication of offensive material. He says that seems to be the case for events such as the Holocaust. Members of the public denounce those who say the Holocaust never happened.
“We don’t want the Jewish community to be hurt by these sentiments,” Ahmed says.
And yes, of course there are limits; the debate is more about what those limits should and should not be, and what is considered offensive and to whom. A blanket “ban” on religious satire is what he seems to be what he is suggesting.
Satirical religious cartoons should be illegal, says Ottawa imam | Ottawa Citizen.
And the reply by the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists:
“I think it should be up to the cartoonist and their editor as to whether a cartoon has crossed the line and become too distasteful,” said Wes Tyrell, association president and the feature editorial cartoonist for Yahoo! Canada.
“A cartoonist should absolutely be prepared to criticize what they see as poor behaviour by any human on the planet, whether a politician or religious figure. I find the whole concept of ‘you can’t touch them’ as pretty sad.”
… Ahmed’s views on censorship were met Friday with a storm of protest on the Citizen’s website. “I’m Catholic and I saw the humour in Monty Python’s Life of Brian: I didn’t pick up a gun after that,” wrote public health inspector Bruce Kemball, who noted that Canada already has laws against hate speech.
Other religious leaders contacted by the Citizen also weighed in on the issue.
Rabbi Reuven Bulka said it’s too unwieldy to try to define what’s unacceptable as it relates to satire and religion.
“We abhor hateful speech, we abhor speech that’s demeaning of anyone,” he said. “But in the end, the only way you’re going to have an effective counter to this kind of garbage is by people not buying these papers or not subscribing to them. If there’s no market, it won’t happen.”
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
The problem is if you fence off ‘the sacred’ from criticism, then you are making those – very fallible and often not very scrupulous – human beings who claim to represent the sacred from criticism. And that is a recipe for tyranny and bigotry and violence. One of the most famous Mohammed cartoons in Charlie Hebdo – “it’s terrible to be represented by idiots” – was not a criticism of the Prophet but of those who claim – in this case, killers – to act in his name. And, yet, it was claimed, by those same ‘idiots’, to be an attack on the Prophet. It was really an attack on them and their egos and their power. Frankly, some representatives of Islam have to grow up, become adults, realize that they will have to live with criticism, mockery, satire, like everybody else. If they can’t, well, then they are spoilt infantile brats – and frequently at home patriarchal dictators – who do not know what freedom and democracy and pluralism are. Most Muslims, I know are perfectly capable of absorbing criticism – and laughing at it even if it hurts. Being humorless is not a sign of Holiness.
Agree. I think mainstream media in its decision to not publish a few of the cartoons missed the point. Your example being one of them. And there is a fairly significant strain of humour in the Arab world regarding radical Islam as I have shared occasionally.
I agree, Andrew. Yesterday I ran into a former federal politician – and cabinet minister – who told me he was “Not Charlie” because he found some of the cartoons distasteful. I told him I am anticlerical and want to lop off everybody’s head. He shrank back in horror. Irony is lost… I really think perhaps we all could use a few lessons in the history of freedom. Another friend, very British though Canadian, said he too found the cartoons “unpleasant”. I pointed out that British journalism is pretty aggressive – unlike most Canadian journalism – and that the cartoons of Hogarth in the 18th Century, for example, were magnificiently scatalogical and like Charlie very irreverent. And Charlie takes on all kinds of targets, of all religions, and of every other nature too. We, in Canada in particular, have become very milquetoast and tepid and politically correct in our defense of democracy and freedom. We have been so privileged for so long – thanks to sacrifices of generations past – that we don’t realize how fragile freedom and democracy and even just plain human decency and respect are. We also, on the whole, have a very sanitized and hygienic idea of human nature – thus our ‘innocence’ is continually being ‘lost’. There is a flipside of that which is self-righteousness, and the flipside of self-righteousness is a lamentable tendency to form into lynch mobs, metaphorically speaking.
Couldn’t agree more. Accelerated by social media. Coyne’s comment about the ease with which we are offended and take offence makes some valid points.
Pingback: Jason Kenney rejects crackdown on religious satire | Multicultural Meanderings