Euro Diary: freedom of the press vs. Islam sensitivity

The cartoons which messed around with the sacred image of Mohammed ran in Europe, not in Mecca. Listen up, Muslims. As crass as these cartoons may be (some of them are actually quite funny), and as upset as you may be, the rule is real simple: when in Rome, put up with the Romans. OK?
The Muslims have a goddam cheek telling Europeans what to do in their own countries. Why don't they stop fucking their women around and tone down their anti-Semitism? We don't tell the Chinese not to eat dogs. Listen, you medieval troglodytes, we're real sorry you got all hurt and upset, but go stone another poor woman for the "crime" of adultery if you need to get your rocks off.

Blasphemy is Authorized -- by Jean-Marcel Bouguereau

Mohammed sniggering, a bomb in his turban. Another cartoon catches the Prophet on a cloud at the entry to Paradise, shouting at suicide bombers, "Go away, we're all out of virgins."

And twelve others from the same barrel, not always in the best taste, published in a Danish daily, arouse a shock wave. Arab Ministers, forgetting that freedom of the press reigns in Denmark, demand sanctions, even though the newspaper in question has offered its apologies to Muslims. But that's not enough. France-Soir, which published the cartoons, has found itself immediately condemned by the shadowy Council of the Muslim faith, and its director was fired by Franco-Egyptian owner Raymond Lakah, who has presented "his apologies to the Muslim community." Perhaps we need to be reminded that freedom of the press is complete within the framework of respect for the law. In France, everyone has the right to criticize religions. Blasphemy is even authorized. It is perfectly legal until proven otherwise to dump on religions, to judge them to be lying, soul-destroying, mind-numbing.

Unless we want to re-establish the crime of blasphemy? Many of the glorious names in our literary canon, from Lautréamont to André Breton, have blasphemed. And Voltaire first of all, who certainly took serious risks in attacking that temporally and spiritually omnipresent power that the Catholic church then was. It's not certain that we're not in a similar situation today with a worrying rise in Islamic fundamentalism. Why should we be able to make fun of the priest, jeer at the Pope, at Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, but never Islam, under pain of being accused of racism? The episodes of criminal intolerance with respect to Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen have not aroused any protests from the Muslim countries that come today to teach us about morality in the name of a one-way respect. It's obviously not an accident that opposes one country -- Denmark, which, with respect to morals, has long been in the forefront -- to the most obscurantist tenants of a religion, Islam, which, as it awaits a reform that obviously is not in the offing, makes millions of Muslims, and notably Muslim women, suffer.

(Jean-Marcel Bouguereau is Editor-in-Chief of the Nouvel Observateur. He is also an editorialist at the République des Pyrénées, for which this article was written.)