UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon suggested last week that there should be a limit put on free speech when it was "used to provoke or humiliate." Surely he can't be serious, he's blatantly pandering to the easily offended Muslim world who once again rose up in fury because someone, somewhere, disrespected their prophet.
Western democracies have resisted such a law for years and thought they had convinced their UN colleagues that blasphemy laws were a tool used by repressive regimes and had no place in a free society.
But Muslim leaders are hell bent on voicing their disgust at the latest video and will urge the UN to do something about it, namely to introduce an international law that would make blasphemy a crime.
Last Wednesday a French magazine published cartoons of Muhammad as a naked, cowering man, deliberately making the point that even the most offensive expressions must be protected. But the Turkish Prime Minister said he would raise the topic in New York this week.
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