The Cost of Free Speech
By Mina Lauv
There is no such thing as free speech. If I told a co-worker that he has upsetting body odor he would report it to the director and I would get a write-up. Similarly, if I told my neighbor how cruel he is to his dogs he would never speak to me again. Our conversations over the fence would stop and we could never again rely on one another for a neighborly deed.
There is a cost for everything we do and say. We can’t just say what we want. Ask Martha Stewart who was prosecuted for lying rather than insider trading when she sold nearly 4,000 shares of stock that was going to plummet. She was jailed for lying— something we are all guilty of doing from time to time. The cost of that speech? Her personal liberty.
And the price of speech can soar beyond measure. Consider the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, France on January 7, 2015. The cartoonists thought they were committing satire. Instead, they were committing what was tantamount to a death sentence. They died for hand drawings, drawings that for some were not even funny. Some were offensive (even to those who are not Muslim). Who wants to see a naked Muhammad’s rear end? What did it accomplish? The divide between Islamists and everyone else has just widened. If the Charlie Hebdo crew wanted to end conflict then they went about it the wrong way.
Conflict resolution must be accomplished through diplomatic channels. The different groups of people must assemble and reach a compromise. Mocking a religious prophet
is not a good place to start.
After all there is a point at which offensive humor starts to become hate speech. How many times can they mock the Prophet Muhammad without it seeming like an ethnic or religious attack on Muslims? They targeted Muhammad. They chased him down in the streets, ripped off his clothes, and exposed him as a bomb-loving, perverted simpleton. They used cartoons as an attempt to thinly veil their hatred for Islam.
The Quran states that insulting Muhammad is blasphemy. How are Muslims suppose to grapple with the right for a magazine to mock Muhammad and their religious texts stating that Muhammad cannot be mocked? To make matters worse, the people at Charlie Hebdo kept at it; they kept pushing the boundaries. Now they will never contribute to another joke again. Was it worth it?