The notion of individual guilt and punishment is even more fundamental to Western civilisation than freedom of expression. The protests against the cartoons are not only out of proportion, they are also directed at innocent people. While publishing the cartoons may have been an insensitive act, the reaction seems to confirm all the worst prejudices about Islam.

Surely, the time has come for Europeans to reassert basic values and demand a sensible reaction from the Muslim communities.

JENS FREDERIK HANSEN
Attorney-at-law
Copenhagen

Sir, Robert Gibson (letter, Feb 3) quotes Nietzsche on religious interpretation: “Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power not truth”. The publishing of the cartoons in a Danish newspaper was an act of power. The original intention may have been to ridicule an interpretation of Islam which leads to acts of extreme violence. Its effect has been to offend deeply millions of moderate Muslims. Now European newspapers are publishing the cartoons to defend a particular interpretation of Western values and freedoms; that, too, is to exercise power.

In Europe Islamophobia is rife and many Muslims find themselves poor, marginalised and powerless. In the Middle East military force and economic power are used to impose the prevailing Western liberal interpretation of “the good”. Perhaps it is time for the liberal Western establishment to consider more carefully whether that which is done in the name of freedom and right is nothing more than a flagrant abuse of power.

CANON ERIK WILSON
Middlesbrough

Sir, Reason, good sense and toleration are unlikely, I fear, to be the outcome of the law’s involvement with religion. In Hasan and Chaush v Bulgaria (2000) the European Court of Human Rights said: “(The court) recalls that, but for very exceptional cases, the right to freedom of religion as guaranteed under the Convention excludes any discretion on the part of the State to determine whether religious beliefs or the means used to express such beliefs are legitimate.”

Our Court of Appeal quoted this passage with approval in R v The Headteacher and Governors of Denbigh School (2005), in which it was held that the fact of a person’s belief is to be assessed subjectively. As a person’s belief is by its nature incapable of any proof beyond his or her own declaration of it, there can be no objective or reasonable test of that belief and therefore there will be no exceptions for what might be described as eggshell religious sensitivity.

If this is right, we can look forward to much interesting litigation, but probably little of benefit to religion freedom, mutual understanding or toleration.

RODERICK RAMAGE
Solicitor
Stafford

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