In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling that broadened First Amendment rights, struck down the "clear and present danger" standard, which it had set 50 years earlier as rationale for jailing a man distributing anti-draft literature during wartime. But a standard for "prior restraint" remained. Speech intended and likely to incite "imminent lawless action" may be prosecuted.
This primer is worth remembering in the uproar over those infamous Danish cartoons. The First Amendment does not obtain in Denmark, of course, and the blasphemous lampoons of Mohammed published by Jyllands-Posten were not meant to incite lawless action. Probably, that is—although it's hard to imagine the likelihood of outrage never occurred to Flemming Rose, its culture editor. Nevertheless, most of the inciting, long after the fact, has been done by newspapers and clerics in Arab and majority-Muslim nations, and commentators here and elsewhere are correct in pointing out that this incitement has been at best cynically manipulative.
Rose invited cartoonists to draw Mohammed after learning that a children's book author could not find an illustrator willing to take on the assignment of picturing the Prophet, which is forbidden in Islam.
Rose has said that he meant no offense to Muslims, but rather wanted only to put "self-censorship on the agenda."
It is worth noting that Danes, and the Dutch and British, have reason to fret about a swelling minority population that does not share their societies' secular values, and it would be comforting if the indignation of the American right reflected similar ideals. But of course many who clamor for publication of the cartoons on these shores freely condemn artists who in their eyes defile Christian symbols.
The involvement of government funds in exhibitions that included Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" and Chris Ofili's dung-spattered Virgin, and the relative virulence of Muslim reaction to the desecration of their Prophet are both beside the point. For some time, part of the American right has sought to convince Americans that Islam is by nature incorrigibly violent. The Washington Times' Diana West, whose column runs in the Review-Journal, compares the reticence to publish the Danish cartoons to the taxes Jews and Christians paid conquering Muslims in various societies. This is an element of a larger conservative campaign that equates any meager effort to accommodate Islamic sensibilities with capitulation to terrorists.
In another recent column, West wondered why few media outlets have seized on a remark attributed to Pope Benedict XVI, who supposedly asserted that Islam is incapable of modern reform because the Koran will not admit reinterpretation. Papal proscriptions of homosexuality and birth control, of course, have followed a progressive spirit of biblical analysis. No Christian would assert the inerrancy of the Bible these days. Only Muslims —all of them, every single one of the billion-plus—are mired in a medieval mind-set.
A more paranoid observer might conclude that some Americans actually want a war with Islam.
The Los Angeles Times' media analyst Tim Rutten questions why so few American news outlets have shown the cartoons and comes up with hypocrisy for an answer. (The R-J also reprinted his piece, thoughtfully adding itself to his list of papers willing to print some of them.) The New York Times ran a picture of Ofili's work with a thoughtful analysis of the cartoon contretemps by art critic Michael Kimmelman, Rutten points out, and CNN declined to show the Mohammed cartoons while nonetheless displaying hateful anti-Semitic cartoons from the Arab press. Meanwhile, the Boston Phoenix simply admitted it was too scared to run them.
All of this, at this point, is probably silly, as news is news and should be covered as such. (Although, note to editors: If column space is tight, I'll understand your reluctance ... )
Look, Western societies need to defend the secular ideal from suppression by any religion. But this is not the same thing as petulantly picking a fight. Yes, fear has afflicted some editors and producers. But let's acknowledge that the more we do to aggravate the situation, the more difficult we make the job we keep asking moderates in the Islamic world to do for us. By invading Iraq we played right into the extremists' hand, did exactly what Bin Laden told his followers we would do. By propping up sultans and dictators over the years, we've driven millions of Muslims into the clutches of evil manipulators of Islam. To keep militants distracted, those rulers not only tolerate anti-Semitism, they foment it, and they've opened the valves for the cartoon hysteria.
Although plenty of commentators, left and right, have defended the Mohammed cartoons, nobody has had the good sense to question why deliberately insulting a billion people to make a vaporous point is a wise idea. It seems more like an incitement of imminent lawless action.
Chuck Twardy has written for newspapers and magazines for more than 20 years. His website, www.members.cox.net/theanteroom, has a forum.