The Right to Offend?

From the desk of Fr. Ignatius Waters, cp

Sunday, January 25th, 2015

A father said to his son: “Find out which way the crowd is moving, son, and then run like hell in the opposite direction!” I think there’s wisdom in that advice and I was reminded of it during these past weeks as we heard of the atrocities in Paris and the ensuing debate about free speech and the media’s ‘right to offend’ Like everyone else, I was shocked and horrified by what the jihadist murderers did. Nothing could ever justify their extreme response to what was written in the newspaper Charlie Hebdo. I had never heard of this paper but the more I do hear of it, the more I’m ‘running like hell’ in the opposite direction from those who justify this paper’s ‘right to offend’ in the name of free speech and free expression in the way they have abused it. Charlie Hebdo describes itself as ‘a silly and rude newspaper’. Most people would have no problem with a silly and rude paper. But Charlie Hebdo is not just silly and rude; it is sick and crude, inflammatory and intentionally vile and blasphemous. The cartoons are often ugly, racist, anti – Semitic, anti-Catholic and especially anti Muslim. I’m sure in the U.K and here they could be prosecuted for “publishing material that is likely to incite religious or racial hatred.” Surely all those people who rightly stood shoulder to shoulder with the people of Paris and France in their time of need and those who wore their “Je suis Charley” badges were not supporting freedom of speech as abused by the Charley Hebdo paper. That kind of abuse could have contributed to the radicalizing of young Muslims and something similar no doubt gave rise to the need for blasphemy laws in former times.

The Irish Times took the view not to republish material likely to be seen by Muslims as ‘gratuitously offensive’ and which would not contribute significantly to advancing or clarifying the debate on the freedom of the press. But then goes on to say the ‘right to offend’ which follows from ‘freedom of expression’ can be defended in other ways. The ‘right to offend’ is a strange concept. Of course every time you open your mouth, every time you put pen to paper you risk offending someone by what you say. At other times, we need the courage to passionately name and confront what we see as evil and wrong, like Jesus did, and take the consequences that may follow for ourselves and certainly did for Jesus.

But that, I feel, is very different from demonizing a whole people like the Jews or a world religion like the Muslims. And, I must confess, it was because I heard some of the disgusting and obscene things said about Jesus and the Trinity, which I won’t repeat here, that I felt I had to speak of this at all! And surely ‘the right to offend’ doesn’t include making the Holocaust a subject of humour or our own Famine? Recently there has rightly been an outcry over the proposed Channel 4 comedy series Hunger, based on our Famine. Surely there has to be some limits to this freedom of expression and this ‘right to offend’?

Yeats wrote, “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” Charlie Hebdo tramps on what means everything to millions and millions of people while, at the same time, scolding them for not having a sense of humour!