On Sunday night, two Islamic fanatics were killed right as they began their attack in Garland, Texas. They failed to kill anyone in their assault against a gathering of the American Freedom Defense Initiative which had been advertised as a contest to draw cartoons of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam.
Some have recognized the attack as an assault on the freedom of speech — the sort of attack that has inspired groups like AFDI to wage public campaigns against the Islamic faith. Others have denounced AFDI as a hate group that routinely demonizes Muslims and in this case tried to provoke them.
Perhaps everyone is at least partly right — but that doesn’t mean everyone is morally equal.
In the late 1980s, a U.S. government grant for artist Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” showed the lengths to which some bureaucrats and artistic elites will go in order to offend religious sensibilities. At the time, those Christians who objected were given high-handed lectures about how, in a pluralistic society where freedom of speech is paramount, they must tolerate (and perhaps even fund) provocations against their religion.
Likewise, the event in Garland was surely provocative, even if it wasn’t government-funded. Islamic tradition prohibits the depiction of sentient beings, but depictions of Mohammed are considered especially sacrilegious — the rough equivalent of the desecration of Christian images or relics.
But as provocative as a Mohammed-drawing contest may be, what about all of those lectures from the times of “Piss Christ?” Do those no longer apply now, when free speech offends a group less distasteful to the cultural elite? Are offenses against Christian sensibilities the only ones permitted by the First Amendment?
And will the lecturers maintain their silence if other events that represent potential provocations to some Muslims — say, gay-pride parades — begin to inspire attacks as well?
Let there be no confusion: The First Amendment exists precisely to protect speech offensive enough to motivate a coercive response. To say otherwise is to defeat its purpose. If no one expressed themselves in ways that made others uncomfortable, there would be no need for the Constitution’s near-absolute prohibition on laws about what people can and cannot say. This is why the Garland group’s provocation is an insignificant matter compared to the lack of restraint shown by the two deceased malefactors. The worst possible response to this attack is to say that those who staged the Garland event are cranks who hold offensive opinions, and therefore somehow their rights are less equal than those of other Americans.
Neither compassion nor toleration permits the drawing of any moral equivalency between provocative speech and violence.
Most Americans learn at a young age that they have no business using violence or threats to force others to conform to or even respect their own religious beliefs. The future must not belong to those unwilling to absorb that very basic lesson of good citizenship.
