‘Freedom.’ It rolls off our tongues so easily, yet rarely do we stop to consider the very varied concepts that underpin it and are referred to by the word.

I have the freedom to do as I please, for example, but as the old adage says, my personal freedom ends where your nose begins. So, by implication, everything I do in the exercise of my freedom – my every deed and word – must be underpinned by the awareness of the very great responsibility to not infringe upon someone else’s rights. In some areas, this is very simple: the freedom to drive a car brings with it the responsibility of driving carefully and without inconveniencing other road users, for example.

In other areas, particularly in terms of the freedom of speech and expression, the implied responsibilities are often extremely hard to pin down and can become very contentious issues, as was the case with the unfortunate cartoons first published by the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten. What that distasteful episode highlighted was the fact that while the freedom of expression ought not be controlled through legislation, there is a dire need for it to be regulated by good and informed judgement.

Last year in the European Union, for example, there was much debate about criminalising Holocaust denial. The eventual draft legislation was quite carefully worded to sentence only those guilty of “publicly condoning or grossly trivialising” crimes of genocide recognised by the International Criminal Court “when the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite violence or hatred”. Nevertheless, the draft drew strong and vociferous criticism for being open to misuse and misinterpretation. After all, what is incitement to violence for one man may be the freedom of expression for the next and, as the legal profession knows, it is extremely difficult to judge intent.

The answer, therefore, lies in the exercise of good judgement. If there is any reason the cartoons ought not have been published, it was that some of them were in bad taste – although good or bad taste is a largely subjective yardstick, of course – and stank of xenophobia, as did Iran’s response in commissioning comparable ‘artwork’ on the Holocaust. The editors of Jyllands Posten could have exercised better judgement as, most importantly, could have done the outraged mobs that attacked and burned down their own cities.

Lately, the issues of censorship and freedom of speech have come to the fore yet again with Random House’s cancellation of a contract to publish a book by Sherry Jones on the prophet’s bride. Salman Rushdie went to the length of emailing the Associated Press: “I am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have cancelled another author’s novel because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals. This is censorship by fear and it sets a very bad precedent indeed.”

This amounts to missing the point about what free speech and censorship really refer to. A more rational view is presented in The New York Times by Stanley Fish, who points out that Random House is free to publish or not publish whatever it likes, and the decision has little to do with free speech or “any other high-sounding abstraction.”

Fish warns against conflating the colloquial sense of the word ‘censorship’ with the meanings it carries in philosophical and legal contexts. “In the colloquial sense,” he writes, “censorship occurs whenever we don’t say or write something because we fear adverse consequences, or because we feel that what we would like to say is inappropriate in the circumstances, or because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. (This is often called self-censorship. I call it civilised behaviour.)”

Pointing out that much of what is inflated to ‘censorship’ is actually ‘judgement’, he rationalises that “we go through life adjusting our behaviour to the protocols and imperatives of different situations, and often the adjustments involve deciding to refrain from saying something. It’s a calculation, a judgement call. It might be wise or unwise, prudent or overly cautious, but it has nothing to do with freedom of expression.”

To extrapolate from Fish’s argument, it is censorship, in fact, when a country criminalises the professing or publication of Holocaust denial, when critics of the government are jailed here in Pakistan, when a two-in-one president forces cable operators to stop airing certain television channels. The key point is that on the one hand, expression is being criminalised while on the other, the restrictions are blanket ones. “You shall not write or speak about this, ever,” he writes. “That’s censorship.”

Random House’s act was therefore not one of censorship since other press houses are free to publish the book. And, “It is certainly not an episode in some ‘showdown between Islam and the Western tradition of free speech,’” Fish points out. “Formulations like that at once inflate a minor business decision and trivialise something too important and complex to be reduced to a high-school civics lesson about the glories of the First Amendment.”

While at a funeral, therefore, is it self-censorship to refrain from laughing heartily at a joke one’s just received via SMS? I doubt it; it’s merely delicacy. In calling someone names or publicly humiliating them, am I exercising freedom of expression or merely being rude? Many would say the latter. Am I acting responsibly when I denigrate another faith or seek to deny a historical reality? Far from it.

That said, however, it must be acknowledged that good taste, judgement or finesse are all grey areas and vary greatly from person to person. And, simply because something is in poor taste is no reason to prevent it from existing. That is why legislation on or the criminalisation of certain sorts of expression is a bad idea, such as Pakistan’s infamous Blasphemy Law. It is akin to the debate about whether an unmade bed installed in an art gallery constitutes ‘art’. Who can say? Everybody has the right to their view but no one has the authority to emphatically deny it legitimacy.

It follows that no one ought to be able to declare it illegal to express an unpopular view on the Holocaust or Islam or anything else. But because the view is unpopular or incendiary, the one making the observation must do it as responsibly as possible, without the taints of racism, bigotry, xenophobia etc. And, those who are on the receiving end – the Muslims outraged by the cartoons, for example, or Jews horrified at Holocaust denial – must react in a similarly responsible fashion, for in doing so they are protecting by extension their own freedom of expression. People in many countries were killed during riots over the cartoon controversy, while London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from his job for losing his cool and likening a reporter – who he was later told was Jewish – to a concentration camp guard. Such irresponsible responses set precedents of threat, so that individuals and organisations can, in effect, feel themselves being blackmailed into silence. It is not profitable to ban certain sorts of expression because others find them distasteful, since that is a path with no end and the sphere of public debate would eventually shrink to nothing. But it is profitable to express views or react to them in a civilised, well-judged manner.

Postscript: Going around via SMS: “Due to the severe shortage and high cost of electricity, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off.” Hats off to whoever thought that one up, it couldn’t describe Pakistan more perfectly.

hmumtaz@dawn.com