Free Speech and the Right to Insult

Posted: 9 January 2015




In the wake of the attack the tone from governments around the world has been the expected solidarity and restatement of the value of free speech. What seems less forthcoming though is the observation that the right to free speech comes with the responsibility of some consideration for others. It is a fairly simple example, but if a school child repeatedly taunts another child with insult after insult, eventually it can be expected that the child bearing those insults will snap and retaliate; it doesn’t make the retaliation right but who is truly to blame? For many people, an insult to faith is far greater than an insult made about their own mother. Emotional and spiritual hurts are real and might be felt more deeply than the pain of a physical attack, it is a point that the common secularist often fails to grasp.

As a response to the shootings thousands of people flocked together in Paris and cities across Europe to pay tribute to the victims. In an apparent show of solidarity many held up pens or placards reading ‘I am Charlie’. While I appreciate their gesture I am very proud to affirm here and now that, ‘I am not Charlie’. I do not believe that it is a virtue to mock and belittle the beliefs of others. I do not believe it is a virtue to quash the good name of others. I do not believe we have a right to spread gossip and scandal. Publications like Charlie Hedbo do not make the world a richer place, they cause division and hurt amongst people. They do violence to the hearts and feelings of others.

It is tragic that the editor and staff of Charlie Hebdo were killed, I am truly sorry for their loved ones. I am sorry that those who killed them thought that hatred and murder would avenge their anger. However, using my own right to freedom of speech I can state my belief that those workers at Charlie Hebdo are not innocent heroes. They chose to dedicate their lives to mockery. They used their pen as a sword to execute the beliefs of not just Muslims, but Christians, Jews and an array of other figures. Yes, it was those gunmen who fired the physical weapons, and there is no excuse for murder, but in the strangest and saddest twist of fate, it was those very pens that really took the lives of the twelve people in Paris.