COMMENTARY: It is wrong to insult that which is sacred
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By Jukka Siikala
The editor-in-chief of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has made a powerful public statement. In his view, the condemnation of the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad amounts to "a victory of opponents of freedom of expression".
The comment is revealing, because it calls to mind restrictions that are obviously experienced as negative - even censorship - which is not considered to be part of Western democratic and free society.
When it is understood in this way, freedom of expression is detached from its social reality, and from the rules built in different ways by various cultures and different societies, whose expression and freedom are being guided in practice. In spite of the wording of the law on freedom of expression, no society has given people the right to say absolutely anything they like any time that they want to. Expression is restricted by different social norms. These norms define what is proper for each individual to say in each situation.
It is certainly interesting that these social norms are not seen as restrictions on freedom of expression, but rather as rules of propriety.
One of the accepted restrictions on public use of speech applies to the expression of racist comments. Labelling a nation or an ethnic group according to some externally noticeable characteristics is not seen as acceptable, and refraining from these kinds of statements is not seen by many to be a restriction on freedom of expression.
A businessman who is selling a telephone network to an Arab country is careful not to say anything that would insult a potential customer, and tries in every way possible to act according to culturally acceptable norms.
Boys talk about boys' things amongst themselves, and are more careful about what they say when their mother is present.
The norms which restrict the freedom of acceptable expression are therefore quite diverse, and social and cultural situations define that freedom very much on a case-by-case basis.
A person usually learns the norms concerning what is proper to say within a culture when he or she learns rules of social behaviour in other ways as well. Communication between cultures is considerably more complicated. The borderline between what is proper and what is not varies considerably from one culture to another, and that is why the danger of serious insult is constantly present. However, it is nearly universal that serious insults are perceived in matters that are considered culturally sacred or taboo.
It is not always obvious what issues are sacred.
People travelling to holiday destinations in the Pacific might admire openly erotic traditional divine images, and be completely surprised when they are admonished by the police for wearing an excessively revealing bathing suit at the beach. Eroticism is sacred, and therefore, its display on a human is seen as offensive.
Presence and absence are typical opposing expressions of holiness. Sacred matters are either depicted profusely, or not at all. Christian churches depict sanctified people with icons, crucifixes, and pictures of saints. In the Islamic culture, the holiness of the Prophet is emphasised by not depicting him.
This taboo on images has been as sacred as the most sacred of Christian images. In addition, both function as central definers of the cultural context, with whom all members of the culture in question have a personal - albeit variable relationship.
Insults aimed at that which a culture considers sacred are always collective insults, affecting the whole community in one way or another. Desecration of images, or the depiction of that which must not be depicted, cause equally strong reactions, regardless of the purpose of whoever commits the act.
Testing the limits of freedom of expression in Denmark over an act considered taboo by Islam is tantamount to consciously forgetting these very effects, and therefore amounts to indifference toward the very basic rules of communication between cultures.
In a polarised global political situation, where leading Western political forces seek to create a negative image of the Islamic world, publicity of this kind is certainly not an experiment in freedom of expression requiring much courage. The right of the fourth estate to free dissemination of information was supposed to secure the possibility of criticism. Uncritical publicity, which insults that which a foreign culture considers sacred, tends to expand and deepen the conflict, in which freedom of expression should allow for the critical examination of causes and effects.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.2.2006
The writer is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Helsinki.
More on this subject:
 Art challenges values held sacred by the faithful
COMMENTARY: Even negative expression must be free
Helsingin Sanomat
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