“The drawings have started a very important debate that will last for many, many years,” Rose told a news conference.

The real debate here is about finding an acceptable compromise between freedom of press and speech on one hand, and tolerance of people’s deepest life beliefs on the other.

We don’t propose to find that compromise here. Especially since, to an extent, the matter is not readily solvable in moral terms: Muslims can justifiably consider the cartoons to be religious slander, and the media can justifiably defend their right to free speech.

Deciding which is most important then becomes a matter too deeply engrained in people’s gut beliefs, whether it is religion or democratic liberties, to hope to find an easy rational answer. Yet it is and will remain an important issue.

Rose said he “felt provoked when I heard institutions, media and people in Western Europe were putting reins on themselves because they were afraid of offending Islam,” comparing this self-censorship to the prior situation in the Soviet Union, where he worked in the 1980s.

Legally speaking, Rose reminded that the decision to publish the cartoons fell into the Danish law.

He certainly is right when he says that the debate is doomed to last for a long time… Hopefully this can be achieved with a clear-headed mindset – and not lead to the violent events that followed the publishing of the cartoons?


If you have any comments or opinions on the subject, do contribute. But please stay within the tolerable – undefined - limits precisely thrown into light by this debate.

Source: SignOnSanDiego.com