This diary is a slightly extended reply I posted in response to threads on the subject of the Mohammed cartoons. Rather than explore again the motives in publication and the reported reaction in the Muslim Ummah against them, I think it would be helpful to consider in detail whether the comment that we should condemn the protests as contrary to the principles of free speech is a legitimate argument once you leave the abstract Rationalist ideal and start to look at what happens in the real world.

The very serious problem for me is that there are double standards in operation that only go to illustrate the degree of prejudice that has been whipped up in the West by a combination fundamentalist muslims carrying out what they see as their religious duty and those who wish to libel the religion for their own purposes.

Consider whether these quotes apply to the printing  or showing on TV of a drawing directly equating a religion with terrorism, you will see the reason for the small ommissions below the fold.

1

Teaching the next generation that demonizing a religion is an acceptable way to express political opinions ill prepares …. children for a peaceful future.

2

“We don’t think government TV stations should be broadcasting …. [that which] we consider racist and untrue” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Thursday.

3

 Government policy was not to broadcast content that “harms sacred religious values”.

4

…. that promotes hatred would be extremely unfortunate and counterproductive,” State Department spokeswoman Anne Marks said.

Well these are not recent quotes about the cartoons but go back to October 2002 when Egyptian TV started broadcasting a drama which the BBC outlined thus

The 30-episode series, Horseman without a Horse, tells the story of an Egyptian man fighting British imperialism and Zionism in Palestine in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Reports say it draws on some elements of the Protocols, a forged document purporting to prove Jews plan to dominate the world.

The main character in the series leads the struggle against the British until he finds a book written in Russian that turns out to be the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This provides proof, for the character in the series, that his enemy is not the British, but the Elders of Zion.

The “Protocols” were a forgery from around 1900 which purported to reveal a world-wide Jewish conspiracy for domination. (Stange how “they want to take over the world” is a recurrent theme to accuse those who are “other”). The Nazis used the Protocols as part of their excuse for organised anti-semitism which led to the Holocaust. Jews are rightly sensitive about its further dissemination and it is banned in some countries.  

The first quote is from a letter to Colin Powell from the Anti-Deformation League, a Jewish lobby group in the USA. Clearly they were influencial in the State department as the quotes from their spokespeople reported by the BBC above show. They also quoted an Egyptian minister in charge of broadcasting(3).

The Protocols and the historical “blood libel” can be seen as as sensitive to Jews as the libel in the cartoon and a depiction of Mohammed would be to Muslims. The actual original blood libel was the assertion in the Church that Jews would kill their children rather than allow them to be converted to Christianity. In an interesting article of this, Israel Shamir explains how this falsehood might be the result of a (deliberate?) cultural misunderstand by the Christians, as claimed in a book by Professor Israel Yuval of Hebrew University in Jerusalem:

The murder was performed as ritual slaughter followed by victim’s blood libation, for the Ashkenazi Jews believed that spilled Jewish blood has a magic effect of calling down Divine Vengeance on the heads of the Gentiles. Others used the victim’s blood for atonement.

Yuval also claimed evidence of actual child killings:

In Mainz, Yitzhak b. David, the community leader, brought his small children into the synagogue, slaughtered them and poured their blood on the Arc, proclaiming `Let this blood of innocent lamb be my atonement for my sins’. It happened two days after the confrontation with Christians, when the danger passed by.

What happened of course is that any child murder became blamed on the local Jews by the Christians, claiming the Jews’ motive was to use the blood in the Passover matzo meal. Shamir goes on to assert that the publication of the book in English was supposed “to appear a few years ago in California University Press, but for variety of reasons this has not happened yet. It is certainly sheer coincidence that some American Jewish scholars objected to this book being published and called to `erase it from public conscience'”

The rest of the piece is mostly devoted to a critique of how Israel uses the accusation of “blood libel” to silence criticism of its actions against Palestinians, while not being averse to making similar accusations about them.

Now while I am open to being informed that Shamir has his own motives for making these statements, I hope they will go beyond the “self hating Jew” line and be evidence based. What we have though are two instances of topics that are so sensitive to Jews that they invoke the wrath of the US State Department to demand censorship, albeit in diplomatic language and where contrary evidence to assertions by Jews appears to be suppressed. These surely are prima face demands to curtail freedom of speech because of religious sensitivities which are supported by the US State Department or where the calling on guilt over previous injustices is enough to silence critics of a semi-theocratic state for exercising their right to free speech.

UPDATE: As MarekNYC points out below, my orginal phrasing describing the history of the blood libel was sloppy and suggested what appears to be the origins were not further distorted. I hope the additions in italics make this clearer.