When cartoonists at a French publication that had poked fun at the Prophet Muhammad were shot dead, millions around the world felt it as an attack on freedom of speech.
Since the rampage that left four dead at a kosher supermarket and 12 at the Charlie Hebdo offices, French authorities have arrested dozens of people — including a comedian — for appearing to praise the terrorists or encourage more attacks.
That has unleashed accusations of a double standard, in which free speech applies to those who mock Islam while Muslims are penalized for expressing their own provocative views. Many Muslims complain that France aggressively prosecutes anti-Semitic slurs, but that they are not protected from similar racist speech.
French police have arrested more than 70 people since the attacks for allegedly defending or glorifying terrorism. The most famous is comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, charged over a Facebook post saying “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” — a merger of the names of magazine Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the attacker who killed four hostages at the supermarket. The comic also has repeatedly been prosecuted for anti-Semitism.
Dieudonne later suggested he was being silenced by free-speech hypocrisy. “You consider me like Amedy Coulibaly when I am no different from Charlie,” he wrote in an open letter to French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
Many countries have laws limiting free speech, and on paper most hate-speech rules do not discriminate against any particular faith or group. In Britain, recent prosecutions include a white supremacist convicted of sending a threatening anti-Semitic tweet to a lawmaker; a Muslim teenager tried for posting on Facebook that “all soldiers should die and go to hell”; and a 22-year-old man jailed for posting anti-Muslim comments on Facebook after two al-Qaida-inspired attackers murdered soldier Lee Rigby.
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Mughal said it was an example of “communities coming together and having a laugh about stupidity, but also about some of the sensitive issues” about difference and integration in Britain.
Romain, the rabbi, said that instead of trying to silence offensive speech, people of all faiths could learn from the deft response of the Mormon church to irreverent stage musical “The Book of Mormon.”
“They didn’t scream and shout outside. They didn’t harass the actors,” he said. “They took out a full-page advert in the program saying, ‘You’ve seen the play. Now come to one of our churches and see the difference.'”
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