Why 'On Line Opinion' hasn’t published those cartoons

On Line Opinion is an Australian publication whose self-conscious, and almost singular, purpose is freedom of speech, so we can’t really keep silent on the Mohammed cartoon issue.

On Line Opinion doesn’t do editorials - that is incompatible with our mission as a Socratic space where intelligent readers can draw their own conclusions on the issues of the day, based on debate between frequently knowledgeable and always opinionated contributors. However, as founder, and chief editor, I do have views, and I have a right, and at times a duty, to express them.

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had every right to publish the cartoons. Some publications have argued that their publication is not a good cause to champion. "Freedom of speech should be reinforced and promoted, but there are far finer causes to uphold than the right to lampoon Islam,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

This is a view that Crikey! - ironically for a while the greatest source of offence in Australian journalism - shares. “There are really important occasions to invoke ‘the precious right of freedom of speech’ … choosing the wrong one … devalue[s] the concept, giv[ing] more ammunition to opponents of free speech for no reason, and ma[king] it a little bit harder for all other journalists to invoke it in the future.”

The implication is that free speech is defensible only when it is polite and responsible. But if free speech defends only the right to be nice to others, then it is not worth defending itself. Free speech exists to protect the objectionable and the unreasonable, or it means virtually nothing.

This is an issue on which journalists and media organisations should stand firm. Even if we haven’t published the cartoons for whatever reasons we deem fit - that doesn’t mean it is wrong for others to publish them.

The Islamic reaction to the cartoons demonstrates that Jihadist violence is not directed solely, or even primarily, at US Middle-Eastern policy. It is directed at modernity. Australians use the term “culture wars” to refer to the battles between the left and the right for control of the national narrative. But both left and right nominally subscribe to much the same values, or at least to the United Nations Declaration of the Universal Rights of the Human Being.

The cultures in the war that has erupted over these cartoons are alien to each other, exacerbated by the fact the Islamic culture of the protesters is inimical to, and intolerant of, any other culture. These protestors don’t subscribe to what some of us erroneously think of as “the global consensus”, and so there is a necessary battle to be joined.

Ironically, the political freedoms we enjoy in the West are religious in origin. They stem in part from the need of post-reformation religious groups to be irrational in their own ways.

To a large extent it was a truce. Faced with the impossibility of remaking the whole world in their own image, the various Christian denominations, as well as theists, deists and atheists, accepted as a compromise the ability to maintain their part of the world as they wanted it, and leave others with theirs. Conversion by persuasion was fine, but force was forbidden.

Islam has never accepted that truce. It seems too self-absorbed to understand that its practices can offend others. From a Christian or Jewish perspective Islam is heretical and an affront to cherished beliefs and principles. But the truce that Christians operate under says that it is OK for others to be heretics, even if some Christians still don’t understand that.

The Piss Christ has become a symbol for freedom of expression in Australia. Depicting a crucifix in a vial of the artist’s own urine must surely be as great an insult to Christians as the Mohammed cartoons are to Muslims. It was exhibited in Australia in 1997, and was physically attacked by extremists, and its exhibitor sued by Catholic Archbishop George Pell.

Both Pell and the vandals lost their day in court - a demonstration of what our civilisation is about. Nothing could demonstrate more than this result the difference between our world view, and that of the Muslims who have torched embassies and whose governments are taking economic retribution against Denmark, merely for being the tolerant host country of the publisher.

So, if I think it is vital that the right to publish these cartoons be defended, why have I not published them?

Partly it is because of the medium we work in. If On Line Opinion were a print publication we would have published them. Newspaper readers expect to get all the vital information from the publication, not have to marshall two or three of them to understand the basics of the debate.

The great innovation of the Internet is the ability to hyperlink so that not all the information needs to be held on the one website. I can link to Tim Blair who has published the cartoons, and give my readers all the information they need. This is not a cop-out. It actually allows On Line Opinion to do something quite different from what most of the conventional media will do, because it allows us to provide the information for an informed discussion, but at the same time keep the temperature lower.

Publication of the cartoons certainly makes dialogue with Islam more difficult, but it also makes it potentially more productive. The broad Islamic reaction to the publication of these cartoons blows away the arguments for moral equivalence between our cultures. The sort of nonsense analysis that says things like, “We are all essentially the same,” or “Well, all religions worship the same god,” are shown to be as insubstantial as Salome’s veils (another provocation in its own day).

Perhaps as a result of this eruption debate can now proceed on a more difficult but more honest basis.

It says something about Australian journalism that The Courier-Mail was the only metropolitan newspaper willing to publish any of the cartoons. While editor David Fagan is not prepared to make a public statement on the decision, he has already shamed his big city cousins who have failed in their duty to inform.

I hope my commitment to freedom of speech, tolerance and understanding is understood by Muslims, and they will feel simultaneously challenged and reassured by this approach, and drawn to engage. So far we have published Irfan Yusuf and Salam Zreika. I hope there will be a number more.

Yesterday morning The Courier-Mail published another confronting photo. Pauline Hanson was back, on the front page, and selling real estate in Annerley, not far from where I live.

The media made Pauline into what she was by talking about her incessantly in derogatory and dismissive terms. They accentuated an “us” and “them” (what David Flint refers to as the “elites” and “ordinary Australians”, or Mark Latham called “tourists” and “residents”). The tribes are always there, but not always as at war as they were in the middle 90s. Pauline became the heroine of the outsiders, a Boadicea driving a Pajero with scythes, who was eventually ground down by the military efficiency of the major party oligarchy, but doing a lot of damage as she went.

The dangers of Hansonism were one of my inspirations for setting up On Line Opinion - a site where people could bring their prejudices, but also a willingness to engage. The success of this site shows that, given a chance, even those people who have closed their minds love the opportunity to argue. Hopefully from the sparring some greater understanding and tolerance will spring and the tribes will become more peaceful.

None of us might change our minds, but we might change our dispositions and recognise our intellectual foes as being at least worthy of respect.

The way in which the Mohammed cartoon issue is unfolding has parallels with the damaging way that Hansonism exploded.

Muslims around the world feel threatened in general. Publication of the cartoons, no matter how justifiable they might be in our own context, accentuates their feelings of alienation and leads to retaliation that we find offensive, encouraging us to retaliate in turn. So a vicious cycle builds. The trick is to deal with the issues without fudging and without escalation, and to engage in conversation, not argument.

Refusing to publish is a form of fudging. It almost suggests an insecurity in our own cultural values that we are not prepared to defend them, and while it might mollify Islamicists will ultimately breed resentment of our deference within our own societies. We must not fudge.

Conversation is harder to initiate, especially when one is engaged in argument. One way to start a conversation is to find some common ground, and to show empathy. So here is my personal conversational gambit.

I can identify with the Islamic aversion to images of the prophet. Calvinism, part of my religious heritage, at one stage opposed even stained glass windows and has never accepted crucifixes, because you do not make graven images of God. I still remember, as a nine-year-old, how confronting I found the painted statues on my first day at St Joseph’s Kangaroo Point. They smacked of popish idolatry, and this was only in the 60s.

The editor of the Jyllands-Posten probably only intended to sell more copies when he published the cartoons, but events are not limited in their potential consequences by the motives or intentions of the actors. The 12 cartoons of Mohammed give us all a different frame in which to conduct the conversation that Islam and the West need to have. It’s time for everyone to start genuinely explaining.