I could tell you what I really think about rioting over a cartoon, or about religion in general, but it seems to me a little too easy to criticize the people way over on the other side of the planet, or to focus on horrible situations over which we have no control, and thus no responsibility. I hear the monotone of the intelligentsia and the muted exclamations of the punditocracy, and they all say the same thing: that we are witnessing a “clash of civilizations” between East and West, or that the real battle is between moderate and radical Islam. It’s a great way to feel good about ourselves, and to forget about the war or Abu Ghraib, but it’s a terrible way to improve the world. I was recently informed that I have the right to print virtually any profanity I desire on these pages, with the exception of the F word, whose latter three characters would appear as asterisks. As I understand it, the Constitution also protects my right to write a column asserting that Arabs are fundamentally subhuman. But I’m not going to do either of these things, for what one hopes are obvious reasons. Yet it is not at all obvious that printing a cartoon denigrating the Prophet Mohammed, though well within our rights, should not be done. The contradiction smells like a double standard, and the double standard smells, to me at least, like racism. But let’s first examine another double standard concerning free speech. Brendan O’Neill, deputy editor of the contrarian online journal Spiked, wrote an interesting column on this subject that was reprinted in the December 29, 2005 issue of the Christian Science Monitor. In it, O’Neill compares the ostensibly similar cases of Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist who was jailed for reminding his countrymen about the Armenian genocide; and David Irving, a British historian jailed by Austria for asserting that the Holocaust never happened. The major difference between the two cases was that Pamuk’s attracted international support, while Irving could find no serious defenders. “If we truly believe in freedom of speech,” wrote O’Neill, “then we must defend Irving as vigorously as we defend Pamuk.” On one level, O’Neill was right: certainly, the right to free speech means nothing if it does not mean a right to say something unpopular, even atrocious. But context matters, as do consequences; as one reader pointed out in a letter responding to O’Neill’s piece, denying the Holocaust in Austria, in light of its history and its geography, would be tantamount to needlessly shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, prohibited by law in the United States. Denying the Holocaust in, say, England, would be a different matter. Free speech is clearly a complicated animal, and it would probably be impossible to formulate some universal standard we could apply to every conceivable situation. Enter the magic that is judgment: in cases like the Danish cartoons, as in the case of Irving, we can’t allow ourselves to be lazy and to fall back on the law. We must instead ask ourselves if printing such cartoons is appropriate, considering both the social and cultural context, as well as what the consequences of printing them might be. At this point, those consequences are readily apparent, and include not only the quiet offense of millions, but the violent acts of a minority, which have already led to several deaths worldwide. It is not “letting the terrorists win” to refuse to publish the cartoons (which I doubt anyone would be advocating absent the violent reaction, and in fact no one was back in September, when they were first printed) – it is merely common sense. And it is common decency. These riots did not happen in a vacuum, after all; the context is that in the past five years, the “advanced” countries have invaded two predominantly Arab nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, anti-Arab hate crimes have continued since the attacks of 2001, as well as since the bombings in London this past summer. In short, Arabs and Muslims have been undergoing racist oppression for years in the West, as well as facing Western-sponsored state repression in their native countries. This was true even before 9/11, but it’s gotten worse since. Printing these cartoons, which we know will be read as a giant slap in the face by Muslims the world over, only adds insult to injury. That’s a fact that’s got nothing to do with riots. Mike Sances is a Collegian columnist.