In general I find myself in agreement with you on a number of crucial points throughout this excellent and thought provoking post. I think we both fundamentally agree to the freedom of belief/nonbelief and the freedom of expression that we take for granted, best exemplified by a blog such as this. There were a few points though where I wasn’t in full agreement with you, or where I felt the argument you presented had some drawbacks that maybe needed reevaluation or reconsideration.  However in the spirit of the broad rules we both agreed upon I’m going to restrict myself to exploring just one theme in this response which I will present at the end as a question for you to defend.

First in brief our areas of common agreement: Freedom of religious belief, freedom of expression best represented by self-censorship (if you know that the newspaper/tv programme is liable to offend you don’t read/watch it or complain if you ignore the fact that it is liable to conflict with your views/offend you). Do not harass people with your beliefs, particularly if the methods you use are liable to offend (although not the message I would state). Respect the belief of others, and respect the freedom of others to express their beliefs even if they are contrary to your own.

I also agree that Richard Dawkins is probably a nice fellow, I could be persuaded that he does not intend to cause offence when he proposes that religious belief is contrary to his materialist viewpoint. I remain to be convinced that he is unaware of the offence people take to the paternalistic tone of the presentation of his beliefs. An offence not at the fact that he chooses as a materialist not to believe in god/religion, but an offence that he maintains that it is deluded to have such a belief and that he is obliged to inform believers as such. If his response to belief was: ‘I am a materialist and I consider it inconsistent with my scientific world view to believe in or to posit belief in a supernatural spiritual being and therefore cannot agree with you’ then fair enough, but to say: ‘I am a materialist and to maintain a consistent worldview as a materialist I not only reject but ridicule your belief system’ seems to fulfil Douglas Adams’ critique of religious intolerance and reject Mencken’s worldview that one can accept the theory (as in right to believe) without accepting it as being the truth. This I believe is the offence that people of faith find with Dawkins and I think under the Adams/Mencken criteria the problem he has in the presentation of his worldview.

Now the area I wish to explore and ask you to defend or clarify has nothing to with Dawkins. It concerns two events that you rightly demonstrated as examples of religious intolerance that are at conflict with the points of principle with which we agree. The Mohammed cartoons, and the Richard Gere/Shilpa Shetty obscenity issue.

The Mohammed cartoons caused offence to Muslims but was defended within the Danish courts as an expression of editorial freedom of speech and rejected that it was printed with the intention of inciting religious or racial hatred.

Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty a number of times in front of the Indian media. Civil unrest and legal action has followed.

Both of these have a common denominator, and it is this that I believe you are arguing against, that is the disproportionate reaction to the alleged cause of the offence that includes civil unrest, violence, threats of death etc. In principle I agree with you that this is disproportionate, however I am worried that we are projecting western liberal values upon non-western cultures that are a repeat of the errors of Orientalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalist

Muslim offence was primarily concerned with the percieved blasphemy of drawing a cartoon or an image of the prophet Mohammed. Islam is an iconaclastic religion and opposes images of Allah (as humans cannot comprehend him) and advises against images of Mohammed (for fear of idolatry, that he becomes elevated beyond prophethood, this was an explicit reaction to Christianity and its divinizing of a man). I accept the Danish courts ruling that under incitement to hatred laws the paper was not guilty. The intent was to open up a debate on Islam’s response to criticism (perhaps the paper took on the role of agent provocateur). But its publication would seem naive considering the socio-political climate and the knowledge that it would lead to such responses. Whatever your beliefs on offence and freedom of expression, it was known that this would offend muslims and that an element of radical Islam would respond negatively. And the perception (perhaps falsely) that the cartoon represented Islam as a terrorist culture, was also liable to offend. The artist has defended himself saying he did not view Islam in this way and was commenting on fundamentalism, but again this could be naive considering post 9/11 tensions in the world and the neo-con assertion that there is an axis of evil (tantamount to saying west is best).

The Gere/Shetty controversy centres on two aspects, public decency of which Indian laws are extremely conservative, and Hindu culture which is generally opposed to public expressions of affection. In front of the media it was widely reported and would likely inflame the passions of somebody.  I will not comment further on these two issues other than to remind people that civil unrest and mass demonstrations are not uncommon phenomena in eastern cultures, and that it is not reserved to religion. One need only look at the death threats, violence to property, burning of effigies and mass protests that followed the eliminations of India and Pakistan from the 1st round of the Cricket World Cup.

My critique then, that I invite you to defend is, are we not naive and perhaps wrong to apply western liberal values to other cultures with regards our defence of the offensive?