Should we print pictures of the Prophet Muhammad? This for me is the thorniest issue to come out of the recent
terrible events in Paris. What’s more
important – free speech or respecting the religious beliefs of others? The question comes down to a clash between
two different kinds of rights, where believers tend to emphasise one value, and
liberal secularists the opposing one.
We might assume that freedom of speech inevitably trumps some
ill-defined right not to be offended – or to respond to offence. But the situation is complicated by the fact
that it’s clearly legitimate to oppose racist hate speech, and criticisms of
Islam can never by entirely disconnected from prejudice against Muslims who are
not only a religious group but, in most western countries, a vulnerable ethnic
minority too. As Jews, this sensitivity
should be particularly clear to us.
Jewish tradition has two other important contributions to
make to this debate.
One is Judaism’s radical monotheism, articulated most powerfully
by Maimonides, the 13th century legal authority and philosopher whose
most important intellectual influences were the Islamised versions of Aristotelian
thought he learned from Arabic writers like Al Farabi, Avicenna and
Averroes. Maimonides teaches that the
fight against idolatry is no longer about combatting the worship of physical
images. Idolatry in his day manifested
itself in people’s internalised, anthropomorphic, mental images of God. For Maimonides, God cannot be conceptualised,
known, or spoken about in any way. God
is beyond the grasp of the human intellect and imagination. Any image of God is by definition human, not
divine. So too, revelation is a purely
intellectual process and any anthropomorphic account (which has God speaking or
writing, for example) must be understood allegorically.
Maimonides’ theology should make clear to any remotely sophisticated
monotheist that blasphemy does not affect God, only the feelings of believers who
incorrectly assume that God needs their protection.
The second contribution stems from the fact that unlike western
legal systems, Jewish law focuses on obligations, not rights. This distinction dissolves much of the
tension between freedom of speech and freedom from religious offence in which we
try, problematically, to defend the absolute right to offend the religious sensibilities
of people who we want to avoid upsetting or indirectly harming.
Rather than rights to speak and respond to offence, Judaism
posits two relevant duties: the obligation to avoid harming others through
speech (unless specific circumstances mean refraining from speaking out will
cause more harm) and the primary obligation not to inflict injury or death. Every individual has to weigh up whether and
how to speak, write and draw in light of the harm likely to be caused by action
or inaction. But if someone steps over
the line, we all have an absolute, unconditional obligation to refrain from violence.
Yesterday I met with a Muslim colleague who is keen to initiate
serious dialogue between the Jewish and Muslim communities in an effort to
create a nuanced, non-fundamentalist theological discourse which will lend
support to the values of peace and co-existence. In the present climate, I believe the role of
religious people of faith has never been more important.
