The blaspheming of Islam is not protected by freedom of speech

There is no absolute right to freedom of speech. There is no "right" to defame people or groups and our laws reflect this robustly in the libel laws and other laws. These laws protect an entitlement to respect, which we all recognise as an important (the most important?) ingredient in social relations. The contention that there is a "right" to blaspheme the sacred prophets of religions is a nonsense. There is no such right, our culture recognises no such right, the liberal, democratic tradition, which is much spoken of these days, acknowledges no such right.

There is, at least theoretically, in the Western tradition, a commitment to freedom of speech. But nobody has argued that freedom is absolute, that one may say or write anything about anyone or anything. As stated above, there is no right to "defame" people, there is no right to use freedom of speech to interfere with the course of justice. There is no right to use freedom of speech to incite people to crime or to undermine democratic institutions. There is no right to disclose State secrets.

The very article of our Constitution that "guarantees" freedom of expression, contains the following codicil:

"The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law" (Article 40.6. 1, i).

In 1999 a case was taken to the Supreme Court here (Conway v Independent Newspapers) following what was considered the blasphemous depiction of the Eucharist in a cartoon. In his judgment in the case, a judge of that court, Donal Barrington (since retired), indicated that the constitutional protection against blasphemy extended to religions other than Christianity but that because the Oireachtas had failed to define the ingredients of the offence of blasphemy it was impossible for that court to authorise the institution of criminal proceedings for blasphemy.

So we should not be surprised that others regard blasphemy as being outside the protections afforded to freedom of expression, nor surprised that Western States and Western commentators invoke the idea of freedom of expression, as through it was absolute and not subject to curtailment on the grounds of blasphemy.

The scale of the reaction in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, the Philippines, Pakistan and Afghanistan is, of course, ludicrously disproportionate to the offence given by the publication of a cartoon blaspheming the Muslim prophet, Mohammed, in an obscure Danish newspaper. And there can be little doubt but that an issue has been made of this to fit disparate agendas in those countries. There is also the factor that global television coverage has conveyed a distorted perception of the scale of the reaction in the Islamic world. It is hard to believe that more than one per cent of the Islamic world is even aware of the controversy.

But it is also true that the Islamic world is now deeply hostile to the West and with some reason. The "leader of the free world", America, is now occupying two states that are overwhelmingly Islamic: Afghanistan and Iraq. The "leader of the free world" is also menacing at least two other overwhelmingly Islamic states, Iran and Syria, and threatening a few others, including Libya and Sudan, while supporting an avowedly anti-Islamic state, Israel, in its war against those Muslims who have attempted to undo generations of injustice.

The Islamic world has good reason to regard the West as hostile and good reason to regard Western culture as endemically anti-Islamic. It has also good reason to feel outraged by the portrayal of their religion and culture as primitive, violent and repressive, all the more so when it was Islam that brought to Europe the first inklings of religious toleration and social justice. And, incidentally, freedom of speech.

Of course, the response to the cartoons has been over-the-top, but that doesn't mean there are not grounds for protest. There is implicit in the latitude given in Denmark and now France to this blasphemy a scorn for Islam and all it represents and it is not surprising that this is a cause of great anger in the Islamic world at a time when much of the "West" is literally at war with much of their world.