But why are we surprised that this kind of violence takes place? Much of the Middle East is a toxic combination of lack of education, poverty, anger at Israel for transgressions real and imagined, anger at the United States and other western nations, also for transgressions real and imagined, a majority following a dogmatic religion, would-be "leaders" not shy about exploiting all of these things for their own advantage and almost instantaneous communication.In the United States of the twenty-first century we are used to freedom of speech. We have elevated it (and rightly so in my view) to the status of a self-evident right, which is not really open to debate any more. What we have evidently forgotten is that the First Amendment to the Constitution forbids government from (among other things) abridging freedom of speech, it does not suggest that speech should be consequence-free. We have however evolved in our customs and conventions to the point where, not only do we prohibit the government from limiting our freedom to express ourselves, but now implicit in that right is that we are protected from the consequences of our speech. For example, one might be offended at an insult that someone made about one's sister and respond by beating up the other guy. The offendee who responded with violence would be subject to arrest and prosecution. There was a time when such words would be considered ample justification for the administration of a good beating. But even today, despite legal ramifications, many feel that violence is a justifiable answer to offensive speech. Several months ago I read an article about a town's response to the idiots from Westboro Baptist Church in Wichita, the group that regularly protests at the funerals of the military. Part of the response involved beating up a few of the Westboro members at a local gas station. I wasn't completely sure about the veracity of the article (What? Facebook is sometimes wrong?) but several people who I know expressed admiration for those who beat up the protesters. I was (figuratively) shouted down for expressing the opinion that responding to speech with violence was wrong.
But by and large, despite the reversion to violent response at times, our national consensus is that protecting our own right to freedom of speech (and religion, which goes hand in hand with free speech rights) justifies allowing speech that we disagree with or which offends us. We subscribe to the theory of the slippery slope, that if we empower the government to restrict the other guy's speech or religion, what's to stop it from restricting our speech and religious observance?
In some ways the Muslims who react violently to words are at a point similar to medieval Europe where the Catholic Church ruled all and any deviation from approved doctrine was called heresy and punishable by death. In those days church and state were one - and the First Amendment was centuries from even being conceived - not so different from some Middle Eastern countries - and even those who are not officially Muslim (i.e. Koranic law is the law of the land) there are significant portions of the population that would be happy if that were the case.
Regarding the recent lethal uprisings in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and other places, obviously the notion of freedom of speech as understood in the United States is not considered a good thing there. Without being insulting or patronizing, I don't think they've really thought it through. Even in hypothetical 100% Muslim country, there are different sects of Islam with differing opinions on what makes a true Muslim. Muslims of different sects and various degrees of radicalization routinely declare that other Muslims aren't really Muslims. While the protesting and pillaging hordes want to execute anyone who insults "The Prophet", or at least make such insults legally actionable, they don't take this to the next logical step: what if a rival Muslim group was in power and decreed that their customs, beliefs, mode of dress etc were "insulting to Islam"? While they all think that they agree on what blasphemy is when practiced by non-Muslims, or Westerners, I guarantee you that there is no agreement among the multitude of competing groups about what Islam really means. They would be in for a rude awakening if the harsh measures that they advocate for others were applied to them.
Should people who are offended be legally allowed to protest? Absolutely. That too is a form of speech. Should their anger at perceived insults and affronts to their dignity cause the source of their anger to therefore be proscribed? Absolutely not. In my view this goes beyond differences in culture and religion. As idiotic and provocative as the video in question apparently was, outlawing it sends us down a dangerous path that would take us backward as well as forward.
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