Thanks to Harry's Place my attention is drawn to this remarkable editorial from "Index on Censorship" who seem to have failed to understand that Free Speech by definition means support of insulting and unpleasant speech. The entire piece, which comes across as mealy mouthed BS justifying the murder of Theo Van Gogh, is extensively critiqued at Harry's Place and by Andrew Sullivan so I'll just quote one paragraph:
Together they made a furiously provocative film that featured actresses portraying battered Muslim women, naked under transparent Islamic-style shawls, their bodies marked with texts from the Koran that supposedly justify their repression. Van Gogh then roared his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities. An abuse of his right to free speech, it added injury to insult by effectively censorsing their moderate views as well.
(Sidenote - this brief description is better than the BBC one)
How precisely Theo Van Gogh's roaring of obscenities is an abuse of his right to free speech is beyond me. Generally speaking it is the censors who try to remove the obscenities not those clamouring for free speech. The way that this censors his critics is also less than perfectly explained - usually obscenity laden tirades mean that the audience is more receptive to reasoned speech critical of the view of the person making the tirade not less.
There is a famous statement that no woman is ever "a little bit pregnant", the same applies to censorship, even self-censorship. Either you have Freedom of Speech or you have Censorship. There is no halfway house despite the desires of hundreds of governments throughout history to find precisely that midpoint so it seems somewhat odd that a website that says it is for free expression should seek to find the same limit. Dare I suggest that Index on Censorship believes that Muslims are perfect and thus ineleigable for criticism?
[Additional comment at Zacht Ei making a good comparison to the famous emperor and his new clothing] Update: Buzz Machine shows the traditional viewpoint of how obscenity is usually censored by governments Second Update: In Las Vegas the ACLU shows by example what "Index on Censorship" seems to have misunderstood - namely that fighting for free speech means fighting for the speech of people who say things you personalyl disagree with.