How did events in a small country no one “cares about” (in the words of Egyptian foreign official Fatma El-Zahraa Etman) trigger the first truly global crisis of the twenty-first century? In this book-length scholarly study of the 2005 Danish cartoon controversy, Jytte Klausen investigates and brings to light the complex factors of international radicalization and political escalation. Relying on interviews with key participants, she chronicles the strategies of, respectively, Western governments in the grip of the neoconservative rhetoric of a “clash of civilizations”; Islamist radical groups seeking a unifying cause to sweep up Muslim anger worldwide; authoritarian governments in the Middle East legitimizing their grip on power against mob rule; and European Muslims concerned both about the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe and about the claims of Muslim-majority countries to speak in their name.

Klausen clearly shows how much of the violence, portrayed at the time as spontaneous outrage over the cartoons, was in fact manufactured to stir up anti-Western emotions for specific political goals. At the time, most commentators ignored the “mixed editorial content” (p. 53) of the cartoons and turned them into the symbol of a simple dichotomy between free speech and Muslim fundamentalism. The crisis provoked moral outrage on both sides: Many Danes were convinced that freedom of speech was under threat, and many Muslims—Danish and otherwise—were convinced that openly Islamophobic discourse was becoming acceptable speech in Europe.

For her part, the author avoids such simplistic characterizations and is evenhanded in her assessment of the crisis, fastidiously identifying mistakes made in the diplomatic treatment of the aftermath of publication by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as well as the double-dealings and manipulations of Muslim activists and Middle Eastern leaders. She is right to suggest that the Danes' retreat to the default position of “the principle of free speech” was politically inept and insensitive. But the key question for political theorists remains: What are the rights and wrongs of the cartoon affair? Was it right for the newspaper to publish the cartoons? Was it right for Muslims to protest against the publication of the cartoons? In light of these protests, should we reconsider free speech legislation in Europe?

Klausen is not a political philosopher, but thoughtful answers to these questions can be gleaned from her commentary on the crisis. She rightly takes the problem to be neither that of a clash between “Western” and “Muslim” civilizations nor that of the recognition of Islamic norms by Western liberal states but, rather, that of the status of Muslims in European society and their fair integration within it (p. 130). The question here is: Within the framework of liberal-democratic society, should Muslims be expected to tolerate offensive stereotyping and caricature? Klausen's answer to this deceptively simple question is far from straightforward, however. On the face of it, her position is characterized by some internal tensions and inconsistencies. So she defends the right of free speech but seems unsure whether it should fully apply to defamatory, offensive, or otherwise valueless speech (pp. 102; 145). And so far as legal remedies are concerned, she regrets the fact that courts did not consider the application of Danish blasphemy laws to Muslims (p. 145); yet she also argues for the general abolition of speech restrictions (pp. 143; 182).

Can we make sense of these apparently conflicting commitments? I believe we can, provided we introduce important concepts and distinctions, which are somewhat lacking in Klausen's treatment of these theoretical issues. The two main points I want to emphasize are as follows:

1. 1. The right to free speech implies legal immunity against interference with certain actions, some of which may be moral wrongs. Only a small class of these wrongs is serious enough not to warrant such legal immunity. So, for example, the right to freedom of speech does not entail the right to incite racial hatred and violence.

2. 2. Many European states have a more extensive range of legally prohibited speech. The question of what these laws cover in practice, and how their provisions can be fairly extended to Muslims, is distinct from the question of what the laws should ideally cover (i.e., whether blasphemy legislation, Holocaust denial laws, and the like are justified in the first place).

Let me elaborate, with a view to clarifying some of the normative commitments implicit in Klausen's political theory.

First, the right to freedom of speech implies a right to say wrong things. Plainly, one can have a right and exercise it in an illegitimate, unethical, foolish, or morally repugnant way. So one consistent position for Klausen to hold would be to say that the editors of Jyllands-Posten (and, later, other newspapers) had a legal right to publish the offensive cartons, but they were morally wrong to do so.Footnote ¹ While they should not be censored (by law), they can be censured (by speech): They can be blamed, criticized, and held to account in the court of public opinion. It follows that peaceful protests against the publication of the cartoons are legitimate in a democratic society. What is not legitimate is incitement to violence. So, contrary to what Klausen suggests, it is not “ironic” that “four cartoons demonstrators in London were sentenced to six years in prison [for calling for the murder of the cartoonists], while all the blasphemy suits against newspapers were dismissed” (p. 146). However offensive the cartoons were for many Muslims, they did not fall under the category of speech acts, which intentionally incite violent action and threats to public order. It is one of the hallmarks of liberal society that it does not criminalize all wrongs, only those that affect the rights of others. And, as the US First Amendment asserts, in a liberal society, there is no right to be protected against heresy, blasphemy, or offense. However, as Klausen points out, the cartoon controversy took place in a European country, where various forms of speech are already extensively regulated by law. So why cannot Islamophobic caricatures be treated on a par with Holocaust denial literature and racist speech? This takes me to my second point. The issue of whether Muslims were subjected to a double standard during the cartoon controversy raises three distinct sets of problems. The first is that of formal consistency. Can existing legal provisions regulating speech be applied to anti-Muslim cartoons? There is a lively debate among political theorists and lawyers—to which, surprisingly, Klausen makes no reference—about whether existing European legislation about blasphemy, offense to religious sensibilities, group defamation, and racial hatred, which by and large reflect the historical norms and specific experience of those societies, can be extended to cover Muslim minorities, too.Footnote ² Here, two issues have emerged: the extent to which courts should exclusively take into account the prescriptions of particular religions in deciding whether some speech is offensive and/or blasphemous (cf. the ban on representations of the Prophet within Islam) and the extent to which certain forms of attacks against Islam should be interpreted as racism against Muslims as an ethnicized group, rather than as a critique of religious beliefs qua beliefs.

The second problem is substantial equivalence. It is one thing to establish criteria of formal consistency, and it is another to decide whether, substantively, the cartoons published by the Jyllands-Posten fell foul of relevant legislation. Thus, for example, it is debatable whether the most incriminating cartoon—that of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban—is an instance of serious religious offense, group defamation, or racial hatred. Such judgments have to be made in context, taking into account not only the cartoonists' intentions but also the wider background (Danish and international) against which the meaning of the cartoons was interpreted. At any rate, and contrary to Klausen's suggestion, it would probably not be “sufficient to establish that the cartoons were injurious to believing Muslims” (p. 143). The mere causing of offense, even under the strictest European legislation, is hardly sufficient to trigger legal penalties. Now, let us suppose that it is found that some cartoons are formally and substantively equivalent to anti-Semitic caricatures, of the kind that many countries in Europe currently prohibit. As Klausen says, it is plain that Muslims must be treated equitably under existing law (p. 143). But political theorists can go further—as Klausen herself does—and challenge the legitimacy of existing law.

Here, the third problem arises—that of status quo neutrality. When existing laws are found to be biased against Muslim minorities, we can either “equalize upwards” (extend the legislation to cover Muslims) or we can “equalize downward” (abolish the legislation). This requires a normative assessment of the legitimacy of the status quo, through a clear distinction between existing and ideal institutions and laws.Footnote ³ A critical discussion of European speech regulations is beyond the scope of this essay. But it is clear that the cartoon controversy, and before it the Salman Rushdie affair, has prompted a welcome reconsideration of some of the most arcane and archaic pieces of European legislation: Witness the fate of blasphemy laws in the UK. These were repealed and replaced by the (controversial) Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in 2006. Whether the introduction of a new offense of “religious hatred” is an adequate response to the problem of status quo neutrality is a difficult and important question. Unfortunately, Klausen's argument does not provide us with the conceptual and analytical framework necessary to distinguish these various levels of analysis—formal, substantive, and normative. She freely mixes descriptions of positive law and appeals to moral and political ideals, theoretical argument and more essayistic reflections. What her book gains in readability and approachability it inevitably loses in scholarly precision.

Nevertheless, one could not hope for a more balanced and evenhanded book about the politics of the cartoon controversy—one which illuminates the complex and shifting parameters of this global crisis, and which avoids hasty judgments on the rights and wrongs of the case. In this connection, the decision by Yale University Press not to allow Klausen to reprint the cartoons, as illustrations to her book, is perplexing. Contrary to the various newspaper outlets that came to a concerted decision to reprint the cartoons in early 2006, primarily to take a stand about free speech and make the offense they deliberately caused to Muslims a measure of their own rightful freedom, Klausen's intentions in reprinting the cartoons were exclusively scholarly. Her publishers acted out of misplaced fear, and unwittingly reproduced and perpetuated many of the misunderstandings that caused the crisis in the first place. Whether or not the press had a legal right to censor the cartoons (whether or not they infringed Klausen's own right of academic freedom), they were, in my view, wrong to do so.