Each new day in the exploding controversy over the cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed brings more bad news. It’s increasingly easy to identify with those on one side who say, if this is freedom of expression, who needs it; and with those on another side who say if this is the practice of religion, who needs it. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

I believe that freedom of expression is essential to a healthy society, and that its value is greatest when it contributes to a more just and peaceful society. I also believe that it is possible to misuse this freedom and wonder if that hasn’t happened in this case. 

As I understand it, the controversy began when the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, commissioned and then published 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed after a writer complained that no one dared illustrate his book on Mohammed. I find it difficult to believe that the writer was either a Muslim or sympathetic to Islam. If he were either, he would have respected Islam’s injunction against visual portrayal of Mohammed.

And, while Jyllands-Posten and its supporters defend freedom of expression, I find myself asking what constructive purpose could possibly be accomplished by this intentionally provocative exercise of that right. It certainly wasn’t to help build a much needed bridge of understanding and mutual respect between mainstream Muslims and the majority society.

In the case of these cartoons, the damage their publication is causing to already strained relations between minority Muslim populations and the majorities in many European countries, and the larger Muslim world and the West seems to far outweigh any benefit I can imagine from their publication.

It seems that Jyllands-Posten and its allies might as well have been swinging a stick at a beehive – indulging the impulse to stir things up and not anticipating or caring about the damage that would ensue. I would love to be proved wrong on this point, but nothing I’ve read or heard has led me to believe that I am.

Imagine how this might have been different if Jyllands-Posten and its colleagues had had the wisdom and restraint to engage in the self-censorship political cartoonist, Dan Wasserman, suggested. When asked if his paper, the Boston Globe, could have published these cartoons, Wasserman indicated that the Globe had the right to publish the cartoons, but that he felt that sensitivity to the beliefs of Muslims would keep the Globe from exercising that right.