May 20 is “Everybody Draw on their Prejudices Day!”

I was amazed to accidentally stumble upon an article about the forthcoming ‘free speech protest’ on Wikipedia recently. Thankfully I hadn’t – and still haven’t – read anything about it in the mainstream press in Saudi Arabia or in the last few days while I’ve been in the UK. Hopefully it will remain confined to the 11,000 nauseating Facebookers that have joined some support group for it.

Free speech is a very subjective thing and I can’t see how or where you can ever draw the line. At the very least it comes down to taboos, and obviously different people consider different topics to be taboo. Big deal.

It’s a similar issue to alcohol and drugs. Where I live, alcohol is illegal and drinking will get you into a lot of trouble. Westerners may think this is unreasonable and a breach of our human rights or something, but they face the same situation with Cocaine and usually hashish, so what’s the difference? Why do you have a God-given right to get drunk but not to get high?

And don’t free speech activists have children? I don’t want my kids exposed to unbridled human artistic freedom, thank you. Again, where do you draw the line to prevent spoiling and corrupting children?

Anyway, back to the protest. Some people have said things along the line of “it’s not to attack Muslims, it’s to support free speech” but I don’t buy that. I think most people just want to take a pop. And even if it were true, it still betrays a fundamental ignorance of Muslims’ relationship with the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). We love him more than we love anyone else, and having people disrespect him in such a trivial manner really hurts us. Imagine if one day 11,000 idiots got together and decided to draw offensive pictures of your mother, just to prove to themselves that they could. Oh, and your mother was dead and could not defend herself against it. Would you think the boost to free speech is worth the hurt and humiliation you feel? Or imagine you’re French and someone took a picture of themselves wiping their bottom with your flag…

A few days ago my friend was telling me how he somehow got involved with the Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses protests in London years ago. The police there were ‘protecting free speech’ but at the same time threatening with violence anyone making rude remarks about the Queen. You see where you draw the line? It’s a personal thing, but it pits culture against culture, race against race. And whatever happens, it’s not worth it.

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