Atheist Alliance Decries Capitulation to Islamic Violence
Bobbie Kirkhart

         The Atheist Alliance International calls on all governments that claim to value freedom of expression to stand up to the bullying tactics of Islamic militants, who are wreaking havoc around the world in response to the printing, in privately-run periodicals, of editorial cartoons depicting Mohammed. 
         Many Muslims believe Mohammed, indeed any human or animal, should not be portrayed, and the Atheist Alliance honors their right to that belief.  If it ever were to happen that a government coerced members of any religion to display their icons in a manner which they find blasphemous, the Atheist Alliance would be on the side of the believers.  In this case, where no one is forced to draw Mohammed or even to look at his likeness, we find it ironic that some Muslims are protesting the renditions of their prophet as an inspiration to violence by demonstrations of kidnapping and arson, while making threats of worse mayhem.
         More dangerous than the uprising, the Alliance believes, is the fact that several governments, including three Western democracies, have given comfort to these terrorists by criticizing the private expression of a free press. 
         Ironically, Kurtis Cooper, spokesman for the US State Department, was talking not of the rioters but of the newspapers, when he said, “Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.”  The government of Norway sent their foreign minister to Lebanon to deliver an official apology.  It was a Danish paper that originally published the cartoons and Denmark at first stood by the right to uncensored speech, but has now issued letters of regret. 
         With embassies burned and citizens threatened, such responses might be understandable, but they are not acceptable.  It is the job of government of a free people to protect the free expression of opinion, not to criticize it.
         We commend British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who took issue with a European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson’s warning that newspapers should “think twice” before printing the cartoons.  Blair’s statement said the decision to print is “entirely a matter for the media organizations.”
         There is no doubt in the minds of most atheists that blasphemy laws have contributed to the current crisis, as they give credence to the idea that government should protect religion, and that religious people—unlike the rest of the citizenry—have a right to be shielded from anything they find offensive to their beliefs.  We would suggest that strongly held beliefs do not need to be shielded from opposition or nonconformity.
         To those who hold freedom of religion dear but find freedom from religion unnecessary, we point out that this incident is a clear example that one does not exist without the other.