No principle in liberal democracy is more important than free speech. The failure to defend it under pressure is a sign of complacency or a failure of nerve. Some commentators correctly construed the West's indifferent response to the bounty placed upon Salman Rushdie's head in the later 1980s as an example of such surrender. In the language of political theorist Pascal Bruckner, the response raised the specter of the West's submission to the “tyranny of guilt.”

The Rushdie affair involved a work of genuine artistic merit, however. Should the same unqualified support for freedom of speech apply to the intentionally provocative publication of the 12 cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad by Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's newspaper of record, on September 30, 2005? That is one of the questions Jytte Klausen poses in her estimable book, The Cartoons That Shook the World.

The editors of Jyllands-Posten commissioned the cartoons as part of an ongoing campaign they had waged against “a few local ‘mad mullahs’ with whom the newspaper had a history of feuding” because of their retrograde views on human rights. (For example, one mullah portrayed women as “the devil's work”; p. 27). Editors also sought to counter what they perceived as growing Danish self-censorship regarding violent practices and beliefs promoted in the name of Islam, especially after the brutal treatments to which Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh had been subjected in Holland after their production of the movie Submission in 2004. (Hirsi now resides in guarded exile in the United States, and van Gogh was murdered.) Although the commissioned cartoonists were asked simply to portray Muhammad “as you see him,” editorial statements accompanying the cartoons framed the presentation in an “aggressive tone” (p. 14).

Intellectual integrity and self-respect require Western intellectuals to confront and criticize the dangerous aspects of Islam, eschewing the moral quicksand of political correctness. The difficulty in this case is that the cartoon package presented by Jyllands-Posten went beyond this obligation by denigrating Islam in general in many Muslims' and non-Muslims' eyes. But as Klausen shows, Muslim opinion is a complex tapestry, not a monolith. Most Muslims in Europe accept and support the basic principles of liberal democracy, and many Muslim faithful had no problem with the cartoons; and many who had a problem disavowed any kind of legal or political reaction. Regardless, the violent reactions that ensued in many quarters—in Western Europe and more violently in the Middle East—as the crisis unfolded (thousands of death threats, 200 considered “credible” by authorities; at least 250 actual deaths associated with demonstrations; the torching of Danish embassies abroad, etc.) could not be ignored and dominated public perceptions (pp. 57; 107). This led to a hardening of positions on both sides as commitments to constituencies replaced ambiguities. (Klausen mentions that the private comments to her by several interviewees differed from their public positions; p. 12). She also devotes an interesting chapter to an analysis of the domestic political forces that discouraged Jyllands-Posten and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen (who is now the secretary general of NATO) from publicly expressing sincere regrets (pp. 147–66).

The polarization of the controversy obscured the fact that most critics of the cartoons in Europe strove to assimilate their critiques to existing—or what they perceived as operational—legal and moral norms. Meanwhile, many non-Muslims empathized with the Muslim lament out of respect for religious belief. For example, 52% of British non-Muslims (including the well-known conservative analytic philosopher Roger Scruton) sympathized with the Muslim discontent. According to the author, “Religious Christians and Jews [were] also concerned about blasphemy and the room for religious values in public life. On the other hand, there were Muslims who argued that it was about time that Muslims learned to appreciate free speech” (p. 8). It is interesting to note that although the United States has the most libertarian free speech doctrine in the world, only a few American newspapers—mainly student papers, including the Badger Herald at Wisconsin, which I help to advise—published the cartoons.

Among many positions espoused by critics, three were central. The first complaint was that “representation of the Prophet is forbidden in Islam and that this prohibition must be universally respected” (p. 132). This claim on behalf of iconoclasm was problematic not only because it would mean rejecting long-established Danish and Western free speech principles but also because numerous images of the Prophet have been used without objection in high art (including the famous frieze at the US Supreme Court, of which Muslims are proud) and in abundant forms of street art. In addition, many Islamic newspapers published the cartoons as part of the worldwide political mobilization against Jyllands-Posten and Denmark. Denmark had not used the law of blasphemy since the 1930s, and as Klausen and even many cartoon critics acknowledge, laws against blasphemy and iconoclasm are ridden with problems.

A second complaint was that the most controversial cartoon (of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban) constituted incitement to hatred of Muslims. This claim also quickly ran into difficulties. Denmark has laws against such incitement on the books, but, they, too, have rarely been applied, and then only in extreme instances that much more obviously threatened incitement than any of the cartoons. The line between such incitement and honest criticism of religion is notoriously difficult to discern.

The third major critique was the weightiest, taking us to the heart of the broader political, legal, and moral issues at stake: The cartoons compromised the right of all to equal respect and to equal protection under the law. In other instances, Jyllands-Posten had decided against publishing material critics deemed disrespectful of Christians and Jews. Accusations of a “double standard” rang true (pp. 30–1).

These three claims (especially the third) “raise broader questions about the accommodation of religious Muslims in Western democracies and the capacity of civil law to afford equal protection to Christians and Muslims” (p. 133). How can observant Muslims and non-Muslims live together either without being required to forsake values they hold dear or without falling into a Huntington-tinted “clash of civilizations” that entails unremitting conflict or worse? These concerns are fraught with tension in a world characterized by mass migration, globalization, a wired communications revolution, and meaningful threats of terrorism associated with Islamist factions.

In addition to posing these important questions, Klausen unravels the complex web of motivations, mobilizations, and manipulations that drove the politics, debate, and violence on a global stage. While value conflicts comprise the essence of free speech disputes, the motivations of individuals and groups thrust (or who thrust themselves) into the vortex of free speech controversies are seldom simple. (As Nietzsche wrote, “The pure spirit is a pure lie.”) To wit, was Andres Serrano's depiction of “Piss Christ” in the late 1980s intended to explore the implications of religion in a profane world or to stick a needle into the sensibilities of pious Christians? Is a claim of being offended by speech morally based, or a mask of the will to power designed to silence one's opposition in a world increasingly influenced by symbolic politics and the new politics of offense? Free speech battles display the gamut of principle, interest, power, and belief that make up the stuff of political science. In the parlance of legal studies, they epitomize “law in action.”

At the same time, free speech and the confrontations it engenders can also furnish windows into the tensions and contradictions that percolate beneath the surface of social relations. (Think of the psychoanalytical aspiration of facing one's demons and conflicts, rather than hiding from them in the form of neurosis.) Such respected free speech practitioners as Martin Luther King, Jr., have often provoked such exposure and social examination by taking their messages directly into areas most resistant to their respective causes.

It would be hard to find a better example of these competing aspects of free speech and protest than the international storm over the Danish cartoons. On the one hand, the hullabaloo involved a monumental debate over the competing principles of free speech and equal respect, while also exposing deep tensions embedded in Islamic–Western relations that cry out for constructive and honest reckoning. On the other hand, human folly and manipulation also stalked the stage. If the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon was lived first as tragedy and the second time as farce, in Karl Marx's famous estimation, the cartoon crisis appeared to be tragedy and farce all at once. (Things happen much more quickly in the twenty-first century, as Klausen vividly demonstrates.) Marx also observed that “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.” (Are the recent less-fearsome replays of similar Islam/West tension in New York City and Florida the cartoon controversy's second act?)

Klausen reminds one of Marx's observations early in the book when she speaks of the need to carefully separate truth from fantasy and rumor in this passion play of the moral spirit: “The story of how the cartoon protests developed from small-scale local demonstrations to global uproar only to subside without proper conclusion is fraught with unintended consequences and misunderstanding. The difference between genuine misunderstanding and deliberate misrepresentation is often difficult to establish…. There is a point on which everyone agrees. None of the protagonists think they won … Everybody ended up feeling worse afterwards than they did at the start” (pp. 7; 9).

Many ambiguities and misperceptions colored the tense and dangerous fracas. For example, while the cartoons varied greatly in content and intent, most of the hostile reaction focused on Kurt Westergaard's famous cartoon, which depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban upon which was written the Muslim declaration of faith (the Shahada), “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Though accused of acute disrespect for Islam, in truth Westergaard intended to illustrate how radical Muslims had misappropriated Muhammad in the name of violence—a contention with which most Muslims concur. Another crucial example of misinformation was a dossier that a delegation of Danish mosque leaders brought to Cairo on December 5, thereby helping to launch the internationalization of the crisis. The dossier included the actual cartoons, plus three other cartoons “of a very insulting and sexual nature never published in Denmark” (p. 7). When the dossier became known around the world, many anti-cartoon agitators assumed that the sexual cartoons were part of the Jyllands-Posten package. Misinformation applied to the other side of the conflict as well, as many defenders of the cartoonists depicted Muslim opposition as a simple block of anti–free speech fanaticism.

Among the most interesting aspects of the book is Klausen's portrayal of the stages of mobilization—facilitated by the deployment of Internet and cell phone technology—that transformed a Danish affair consuming government/diplomatic and religious leaders into a genuine international crisis involving mass protests, boycotts of Danish products and companies, threats, and violence (the “descent into extremism”; pp. 45–7). Many Arab governments and religious leaders also used the crisis to rally mass anger in an attempt to buttress their political postures at home and abroad and to damage the West; but like so many sorcerers' apprentices, a number of them came to regret the forces they had let out of the bottle, some of which turned on their progenitors. Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging, especially in our sound-bite world, and so extremists captured the world's attention.

Admirably, Klausen does not entertain the idea that there are easy answers to the cardinal questions she poses. She wisely disfavors deployment of laws against blasphemy and hate, while convincingly maintaining that the practice of a double standard must end. It is wrong as a matter of principle, and it makes the already daunting task of building genuine mutual respect all the more difficult to achieve. On the other hand, I think she goes too far in her criticism of the Danish government and Jyllands-Posen's refusal to offer more complete apologies, given the enormous pressures and principle at stake. Rather than giving equal weight to free speech and religious sensitivity, if forced to choose I would clearly prioritize free speech. An outright apology under these circumstances would have played into the hands of forces bent on silencing criticisms of Islam, and no religion should be protected by such quarantine.

That said, a credible related point is implied by her scrutiny: How one defends one's position is important, not just where one stands. Jyllands-Posten and the Danish government could have defended free speech resolutely, yet in a manner that also demonstrated more respect for those whose religious sensibilities were genuinely harmed. (The difficulty in doing so is a sign of the failures of assimilation in European societies, something America must strive to avoid.) There is a difference between a firm handshake and a vicelike grip. For example, good teachers strive to build mutual trust in class that enables them to speak with the intellectual honesty that they know can sometimes upset some students. Students know the difference between gratuitous criticism of religion and cultures and constructive or nongratuitous criticism. As Klausen accentuates, “motives matter greatly” (p. 2; see also pp. 131–46).

For this reason, Yale University Press's decision not to print the cartoons in this book is troubling. The motive for including the cartoons would have been utterly justifiable in a book about the cartoons, and could have been supported in a brief editorial statement that explained why this case differed from that of Jyllands-Posten. The defense that readers can view the cartoons in other sources or online constitutes a shifting of responsibility to other shoulders. (Would the press have printed pictures of “Piss Christ” in a book about that controversy?) By not printing the cartoons, the press not only forsook an opportunity to take a principled stand for free speech but also played into the hands of those who accuse Islam of being a monolithic force against freedom. And, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali has pointed out many times, such self-censorship only tightens the grips of intimidation and fear.

Leon Wieseltier recently observed in a New Republic essay on the Cordoba House mosque controversy in New York that Islam—like Christianity and Judaism have been—“is a religion of peace and a religion of war.” We need to be open and honest about both sides of this equation and to build bridges to the former in a manner that is consistent with our principles. Free and honest speech is an indispensable means to this end.