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          The publication in Danish newspapers of a series of cartoons defaming the Holy Prophet of Islam has seriously perturbed the Muslims and raised genuine outcry in the Islamic Umma. There have been violent protests in Islamic countries like Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia resulting in the violent death of many protesters. However, these kinds of protest have not been accepted kindly by the advocates of western liberalism, democracy and free speech. They are of the opinion that freedom of expression is a fundamental right of every human being and that in a democratic society the state cannot impose restriction on the right of individuals to express their thoughts freely. The editors of the Danish newspapers have chosen freedom of expression to publish the cartoons in their newspapers and the state cannot take any action against them or apologise on their behalf as that would tantamount to the violation of the right of expression.
Taking clue from the recent riots, these ultra-nationalists are trying to reaffirm the stereotyped theory that Islam is a radical religion, that the religion is extremely intolerant toward others and that the Islamic society is a closed society where people have little freedom to choose. Since Islam is essentially radical and intolerant, they say, democracy and Islam are not compatible and therefore the West and the Islamic civilization can never live harmoniously. While they advocate for these two great civilizations to leave apart, they have failed to understand the basic concept of democracy, i. e. that freedom of expression is an obligation to respect others, views and beliefs and definitely not a right to ridicule.
The recent arrest, trial and conviction of David Irving has raised a lot of questions with regard to the concept of freedom of expression in a western democratic society. David Irving, aged 67, is a revisionist British historian who is famous for his right wing views on Nazism. He is the author of more than 30 books on the Second World War which includes books like Hitler's War; The Trial of the Fox: The Life of Field -Marshal Rommel; Accident, the Death of General Sikorski; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; The Destruction of Dresden; Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich and Goring: A Biography. His books have become best-sellers in many countries.
David Irving is of the opinion that the "Holocaust" or the attempt by Nazi Germany to annihilate European Jewry during World War Two actually never happened. The claim that six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis during the Second World War is not factual but is a myth created by the Jews and their sympathizers in order to gain financial and political advantages like the creation of a financially solvent Jewish state. In his view, people who died at Nazi concentration camps like Auswitz succumbed to diseases like typhus rather than execution or death in the gas chamber. The death of other Jews that occurred under the Nazis was the result of wartime famine, and not of systematic persecution and state-organised mass murder. He also advocates that Adolph Hitler knew little, if anything, about the Holocaust, and that the gas chambers where millions of Jews were supposedly burnt were actually a hoax. In his opinion, Hitler was the best friend the Jews had in Germany, and that he actively worked to protect them. It was in fact Germany which was the true victim during the Second World War.
Son of a royal navy commander, David John Caldwell Irving was born in 1938. He was educated at Imperial Collage of Science & Technology and at University Collage London. After completing graduation, he took active interest in Nazism and began to redefine the history of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party from a revisionist perspective. He became a diligent and meticulous researcher and rummaged through the most important archives of the western world to find material to challenge the traditional western view on Nazi Germany. He has exposed eye-witness accounts, discovered diaries and correspondence which were thought to have been destroyed, has interviewed survivors of the Hitler's entourage and has drawn evidence from the memoirs of men whose part in the Third Reich had hitherto been given little importance. Through his tireless efforts and narrative writing on the history of Adolph Hitler and his times, David Irving has perhaps become the greatest living authority on the Nazi era. His books are hugely interesting, his narrative is compelling and his revisionist arguments are very forceful and based on archival data.
His first book The Destruction of Dresden described the 1945 allied air raid on the city of Dresden, Germany, which he describes as "the worst single massacre in European history". The book became an instant hit and was followed up by a series of best-sellers. In the year 1968 he was sued for libel by Captain J E Broome after publication of the book The Destruction of Convoy PQ17. The book is based on the ill-fated journey of the convoy PQ17 and Captain Broome was the commander of the doomed convoy's escort. Captain Broome won the libel and David Irving had to compensate him, The libel suit ensured that the propagation of his views will not go unchallenged.
In 1977 he produced his most famous work, Hitler's Wars. The book looks at the war from Hitler's perspective, or according to the author "from behind the Fueher's desk." He has claimed that most historians are idle researchers who have not exploited the vast collection of Nazi documents to find out the real truth behind Hitler's wars and the rise and fall of the Third Reich. All their views have been prejudiced by relentless propaganda of the victorious powers against vanquished Germany and therefore their books contain little historical truth. In this book, he has produced the astonishing thesis that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust until late 1943 and that he never gave the order for the Final Solution or the extermination of the European Jews. David Irving even declared that he would give a handsome cash reward to any person who could produce a written document showing that Hitler had given such an order.
As his popularity grew with the propagation of his right wing views, he went further out and claimed that the Nazi gas chambers did not exist and that six million Jews did not die. Such views on his part led to wide scale condemnation from the historical circle in the West and the United States and he was subjected to verbal attack and abuse.
His opponents charged that David Irving had descended much below the standards of scholarship expected amongst historians and that he did not deserve to be considered a historian at all. They further claimed that Irving had "deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents", "consciously used discredited testimony" and "falsified historical statistics". He was branded as a Nazi sympathizer, a racist, an anti-Semite and an active Holocaust denier.
The confrontation reached a climax in 2000 when David Irving filed a suit for libel against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt for branding him as "one of the most prominent and dangerous Holocaust denier" in her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. The libel suit lasted for three months and received lot of media hype and public interest. Although a libel action, it was the Holocaust denial which was, by implication, on trial. In the court Mr. Irving produced a mountain of source materials to support his historical views and alleged that attempts to defame him or destroy his reputation were a part of an international Jewish conspiracy. However, David Irving's reputation as a historian was seriously damaged by the verdict of the High Court in April 2000. Mr. Justice Grey's judgement totally dismissed Irving's hypothesis as well as his reputation. In his judgement Justice Grey described Mr. Irving as a "falsifier of history", an "associate of right-wing extremists" and an "active Holocaust denier".
Denying the Holocaust is not a criminal offence in Britain, but it is a serious offence in many European countries. Countries with laws against Holocaust denial are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania Slovakia and Switzerland. David Irving was arrested by the Austrian police in 2005 on a tip-off while he was on his way to deliver a speech on the Second World War to a right wing student group in Vienna. Prosecutors filed charges against him under the 1947 Austrian law banning Nazi revivalism, and criminalizing the "public denial, belittling, or justification of National Socialist crimes." The charges framed against him in the Austrian court link to two speeches he gave in the country in 1989 in which it was alleged he denied the existence of the gas chambers. This case once again brought him back into the public spotlight after he was ruined financially and disgraced in 2000 when he lost the libel trial against Professor Deborah Lipstadt.
In a much publicized one-day trial held on 20th February, 2006, the right wing British Historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison after being found guilty of Holocaust denial at a trial in Vienna. David Irving is appealing for a reduction in the Jail term. But his prosecutors believe the sentence has been too light because of Irving's close attachment to right-wing radicals and they are filing their own appeal. However, the trial has sparked a serious debate in Europe on how to define and determine the criteria for freedom of expression. The sympattilizers loyal to David Irving now contend that suppression or the right to express contrary interpretations, however unpleasant or inaccurate they may be, is a greater problem than the distortion of historical facts and figures. They further contemplate that it is argument and not law that should be used against Holocaust deniers.
Mr. Irving now appears to be a martyr to free speech. His trial has raised suspicion and anger in many, particularly the Muslim community in the west, who accuse Europe of double standards. This anger is not unjustified. From the Irving trial it is apparent that Europe is ready to cite freedom of expression when it comes to printing cartoons offensive to Muslims, while incarcerating those who insult Jews. Thus, when anti-Semitism is involved, the western governments are intolerant and are quick to smother such views even if that goes against the right to free speech. But when Islam is attacked, they try to insulate the attackers by persisting that such expression falls within the purview of freedom of expression.
For some westerners, the publications of cartoons on the Holy Prophet of Islam are a transient form of entertainment protected by the right of expression. To them satire and the freedom to poke fun at religion is a basic right. But for the Muslims it is an attack on the core principles of Islam because in Islam there is a strict ban on any pictorial representation of the Holy Prophet. On analysing the two views it is apparent that there is a fundamental difference of attitude with regard to the scope, area, limitation and application of free expression in the two camps. It is therefore essential that there should be framing of some ground rules in this regard. It is acceptable that people should always have the right to express their varied opinions freely but such expression should not be done at the expense of hurting the sensitive feeling and belief of others. Rights should be exercised carefully and it is the obligation of the state to ensure that such rights are expressed in a descent manner and that none takes opportunity of such rights to arouse violence and racial hatred. Freedom of expression should not be biased by prejudicial views and there should not be different set of standards to define expression rights on the basis of color, race, culture and religion.
However, more than ever before, Europeans are now convinced that most Muslims are fanatical, backward and violent people determined to undermine Europe's hard-won liberties of press and expression. And the Muslims believe just as strongly that the publication of the caricatures in Denmark and other European newspapers is another manifestation of hate and prejudice which has swept through Europe since the 9/11 attack. Destroying these stereotype views is going to be an uphill task and not many in Europe appear ready to take on the challenge. If the rift is to be bridged, Europeans must recognise that cartoons certainly did cause offence to the Muslims, that the publications were a violation of the fundamental right of expression and that defaming any religion is as bad as denouncing the Semitic race. If the denial of the Holocaust can be banned by state law and deniers tried in court and convicted, then there will be no wrong done if poking fun at Islam and objectionable pictorial displays relating to Islam are banned as well by the European governments.
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The writer is Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the World Customs Organization, Brussels, Belgium. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are in no way connected with his official responsibility