Cartoon Rage vs. Freedom of Speech

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch writes that the Muslim Cartoon Jihad Against the West is a threat to our freedom. He points out that Muslims are asking us to be bound by their cultural norms and laws. But of course these laws and customs are utterly foreign to the Western traditions of liberty, individual rights and limited constitutional government. The whole point of having a First Amendment is to protect speech that some may deem offensive. For if offensive speech can be forbidden, then so can speech which is outside the mainstream of thought. For a free society to survive it needs a continuing dialog among its citizens in which competing ideas can be worked out and the best ones come out on top. But this is exactly what Muslim Sharia law prevents, which explains the intellectually stagnant nature of much of the Arab world.

Ideas have consequences. Muslim societies have placed an intellectual burka over their people which has prevented them from using their minds to elevate their societies. The result is that much of the Arab world is mired in poverty, ignorance, superstition and violence. Only when they embrace the idea of intellectual tolerance will there be hope for them to solve the problems that have held them back for centuries of stagnation while the West passed them by.