Freedome of Expression has always has double standards.
Let us take the simplest example. Every liberal I know argued that MF Husain had the right to paint a naked Saraswati or a nude Bharat Mata. Yet, hardly any liberal of my acquaintance extended the same principle to the Danish cartoons. The liberal position was that Hindus should be tolerant of the manner in which their gods and goddesses were portrayed but that Muslims were right to complain about any visual representation of the Prophet Mohammed.
It is not necessary to be a fully paid-up member of the RSS to recognise that there is a huge logical contradiction here. The Muslim objections to the Danish cartoons were not based on the Muslims-are-terrorists subtext of the content. Muslims argued that even if the content had been laudatory, even if the Prophet had been portrayed as the saviour of the modern world, it would still have been deeply offensive to have seen a visual representation of the Prophet Mohammed.
So why is it okay to show Hindu goddesses in the nude and not okay to show the founder of Islam in any form at all, flattering or otherwise?
The Muslim contention is that Islam forbids its followers from visually representing the Prophet. This is fair enough and Muslims are entitled to regard this stipulation as binding.
But what about the rest of us? We don%u2019t necessarily believe in Islam. Why should we be subject to Quranic injunctions? Why are liberals, who claim to value freedom of expression,
