Can we torch Time Magazine’s offices now?
Friday, 4th November 2011
I should declare an interest and say that I have always admired Time Magazine. It has
great journalists. It has even commissioned your humble correspondent and allowed him to join its exalted company of writers – and more to the point paid your humble correspondent ready money
for the privilege. In normal circumstances I would deplore the notion that its offices should be firebombed and editors, reporters, critics, subs, secretaries and IT support staff reduced to piles
of smouldering ashes, so charred and diminished their next kin would not be able to identify them.
But what possible argument can those of us who shudder at the thought of arsonists torching Time, and immolating all who work there, now make in its defence? The latest issue contains a piece saying that the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo
deserved to have someone – maybe an Islamist, maybe not – firebomb its offices in Paris. It is worth studying because its author seems to be trying to provide a defence for anyone who
attacks his own company’s premises.
1. He pooh-poohs the notion of personal responsibility. He says that the attack is not the fault of the attackers but of the magazine for publishing a "stupid and unnecessary
edition mocking Islam" that begs "for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good". If believers in freedom of speech
and of the press were to find Time's arguments in favour of censorship "stupid and unnecessary", they would on this reasoning be no more responsible for their actions than the Parisian
fire bomber. Time would have been "begging" for it. It would have deserved everything it got.
2. Provocatively, he goes on to insult the reader's intelligence by implying that the edition of Charlie Hebdo was an attack on poor and marginalised Muslims, who can indeed be the
victims of discrimination in France as elsewhere.
The author's idiocies pile one on top of the other. Freedom of expression is not a right that can only be exercised "in the face of oppression"; it is a universal right free men and women can exercise in all circumstances. Being "obnoxious and offensive" may be in poor taste, but there is no law against it, certainly no law that mandates auto da fé for offenders. (If Time wants to propose one, it should have the guts to say so openly.) Meanwhile Time needs to be told that the "moderate people" it is so concerned about do not take offence easily. Indeed a working definition of moderation is a willingness to tolerate the arguments of others, even arguments one finds obnoxious and offensive. Most pertinently, Charlie Hebdo was not attacking immigrants to France but Rashid al-Ghannushi's Islamist party which has just won a plurality of the vote in Tunisia. The religious right may soon become the "face of oppression" in Tunisia but according to Time it will be "obnoxious and offensive" to oppose, mock and satirise their religious beliefs. If Tunisian women begin to suffer, one wonders whether Time will find it "obnoxious and offensive" to take their side, and prefer in the name of good taste and gentility to line up on the side of their oppressors instead."Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile. Baiting extremists isn't bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well."
3. Finally, the author hammers the reader with non sequiturs. He deplores France's ban on the burqa and says it reflects "very real Islamophobic attitudes spreading throughout
society". I am not position to judge that, but am sure he is right to say that the state should not tell citizens how to dress. Many people find the burqa "obnoxious and offensive"
– myself included. But in a free society all we can do is argue against the misogynists, who promote male ownership of women’s bodies. But if Time believes that the principles of
religious freedom mandate that is wrong to ban the burqa, how can it then assert that it is right to forbid satires of religion? You cannot be a little bit free. You either believe in the freedom
to practice and criticise religion or you do not.
Speaking of the noxious, I find something particularly offensive about Americans defending censorship. In the first amendment to the their constitution, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
declared:
But then I often think that we misinterpret Jefferson and Madison's motives. Far from celebrating religious freedom and freedom of speech as values upheld by Americans, they may have realised that they were values that needed to be protected from Americans."Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
P.S. Over at Index on Censorship James Kirchick makes the essential point
that arguments about free speech are always simpler than they look:
"No one has the right not to be offended. No one has the right to firebomb a newspaper that offends them. It’s amazing, given all the struggles and sacrifices that have been made for freedom of speech over many years, that statements so simple bear repeating. But as long as we have moral cowards like Bruce Crumley [the Time journalist] around, repeat them we must."
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Colin
November 4th, 2011 2:49pm Report this commentGot a match?
David Lindsay
November 4th, 2011 5:49pm Report this commentThe level of abuse heaped on Christianity is not moderate and relaxed, as the European and the Coastal American attitude to such matters is blithely asserted to be.
If the threat, not the fact, of Muslims reacting as Muslims do means that in future there will be less such treatment of Biblical figures who also appear in the Qur'an, including Jesus, then so much the better, and not a moment before time.
Dave Weeden
November 4th, 2011 7:10pm Report this commentDavid Lindsay, could you point to some of this "abuse heaped on Christianity"?
I agree with Nick Cohen. (Not for the first time.)
Simon Stephenson.
November 4th, 2011 8:16pm Report this comment"Being "obnoxious and offensive" may be in poor taste, but there is no law against it,"
There is as far as smoking is concerned. At least, this is the only valid charge that can be made against smoking in public places. Presumably therefore, Mr Cohen, you were an opponent of the anti-smoking legislation, and of the official lying and misrepresentation which were used to distort public attitudes in favour of it?
David Lindsay
November 4th, 2011 8:37pm Report this commentDave Weeden, do you ever watch the telly? Or did you hear this evening's News Quiz?
C Cole
November 4th, 2011 8:56pm Report this commentThank you for bringing this to our attention, Nick. The stupidity of Mr Crumley fair takes the breath away. If only he were alone in his delusions, but he isn't. His article is emblematic of the civilisational cringe in the face of Islam documented in recent years by Mark Steyn, Bruce Bawer and others.
It's probably worth reiterating the fact that no British newspaper or satirical magazine has dared publish the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Our supposedly free society is being held to ransom by a bunch of barbarians who want nothing except to subjugate the rest of us to their ridiculous, totalitarian belief system.
The few people who dare protest this state of affairs, such as the EDL, are vilified as racists and fascists. This dhimmification is something we are doing to ourselves and - as you can probably tell - it makes me sick to my stomach.
Dave Weeden
November 4th, 2011 11:06pm Report this commentDavid Lindsay, I do indeed watch the telly (as you call it), I recall no abuse heaped upon Christianity, although I did see some heaped upon the unemployed. Could this lack of charity and meanness of spirit be the abuse you are talking about?
Sadly, I missed this evening's News Quiz. I shall make amends once I have laid out my smelling salts and have clutched my pearls.
Old Slaughter
November 5th, 2011 6:17am Report this commentIf Time Magazine was an airport that headline would have you in clink by now. Only saying.
Santorum
November 5th, 2011 9:47am Report this commentDavid Lindsay
Grow a spine. Is your faith so weak you require protection from insults to it? P
AY
November 5th, 2011 1:21pm Report this commentNick Cohen may spend years writing about boring non-issues and then oops - a well argued article. Ambush tactics:).
Dave Weeden
November 5th, 2011 3:14pm Report this commentSo, David Lindsay, I caught Sandi Toksvig's programme. Where was the abuse heaped on Christianity? "Rowan Williams is very reasonable". That's hardly libellous, is it? Different branches of Christianity "can't agree on whether women can read from their big book of stories" [from memory]. Pretty accurate, no?
Speak the truth and shame the devil. Not in the actual big book of stories, that one, but good to live by none the less. Do you deny that Christian factions believe that testicles are a requirement to stand in for Jebus, and some, rather more reasonably, don't?
Derek McCue
November 6th, 2011 1:48am Report this commentThe right to blaspheme is recognised to the UN as a freedom. rational people have the right to make fun of imaginary friends any time or place we choose.
in that vein:
If sharia law was more inventive Islamic countries would be more competitive at the paralympics.
jcfrench
November 6th, 2011 3:57am Report this comment"Amen" Pun intended!
Banquosghost
November 6th, 2011 12:45pm Report this commentWhat about East End Life the mouthpiece magazine for the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets? If something is a mouthpiece for evil and intolerance surely that is the one that requires burning. Oops forgot, its paid for by the tax payer!!!!!
HackneyJon
November 6th, 2011 4:46pm Report this commentC Cole at 8.56pm. If we only have the EDL to defend us from the rise of militant Islam, then whichever God you believe in needs to help us...and fast! Having seen them and their cronies march on the streets of my local town, then I can assure you that they are indeed racists and fascists - angry, aggressive, bile and hate filled racists and fascists. Nick Cohen is absolutely right of course (as usual) but we leave the defence of liberty to racists at our extreme peril.
Greg
November 7th, 2011 8:57pm Report this commentWould Time have felt the same way if a Christian fanatic firebombed a newspaper's offices because they mocked the idea that the world was created in 7 days? That the newspaper had it coming? Hmmmm.
Kevin Baker
November 8th, 2011 2:33am Report this comment@Dave Wheedon: Abuse heaped on Christianity? Adres Serrano's "Piss Christ"? Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary"? These "art works" were vandalized by angry Christians, but nothing rising to the level of arson, or worse, murder. What could one of these "artists" expect should they do something similar with an image of Mohammed? The Western media is fairly rife with anti-Christian bias (and I say this as an atheist), but no one seems to have the testicular fortitude to be anti-Muslim in the same, open way.
Anti-Christians may get paint thrown on them. Anti-Muslims might get stabbed to death or beheaded. Ask Theo Van Gogh. Or Comedy Central.
Miracoleman
November 9th, 2011 11:14am Report this comment@Simon Stephenson. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor damages my health as a result of secondhand smoke." And, for the record, I am a smoker myself.
Great post, Mr Cohen.
Andy Gill
November 18th, 2011 9:29pm Report this commentMaybe Crumley should apply for a job at Exeter University. Now that resident proto-Islamist Bob Lambert has been outed as a police spy, there may be a vacancy there soon.
Crumley would make the perfect replacement.
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