Many, perhaps most, people who have taken sides in the cartoon wars are ready to see that there's something to be said for the other side. Those who think that freedom of speech is the most important issue here are willing to acknowledge that there's some reason to avoid giving such deep religious offence (it's just that where, as here, there's a straight clash, then freedom of speech takes priority for them); those who think that the gross offence offered to the religious beliefs of Muslims can't be excused will nonetheless grant that freedom of speech matters (it's just that where there's a straight clash, we must give priority to the sensitivity constraints which were so glaringly flouted by the publication of the cartoons). But there is a third point of view which has been voiced, which suggests that both sides are morally at fault, and that their faults are remarkably similar. It's possible that some who talk like this also opt, in their own minds, for one of the above push-comes-to-shove positions, but since they don't say so, it's plausible to suppose that at least some of them don't think in this way, that they do in fact hold that there's nothing much to choose between the two sides. 'A plague on both your houses' is what their view would amount to.
Moral equivalence claims are not uncommon, and sometimes of course they're justified – two actions, or states of affairs, or persons, can be morally equivalent, can share the same moral status. But sometimes the assertions of equivalence are notoriously not justified, and it's worth considering just what might make an equivalence claim legitimate. Clearly it can't simply be that the two actions in question are similar in some ways, since any two actions (or states of affairs or persons) will be similar in some respects, and different in others. More than that is needed for moral equivalence. And at this point people often start to disagree. Some think that if the outcomes of two actions are similar then they're morally equivalent (so intentionally targeting innocents for death is morally no different from targeting combatants but producing collateral deaths of innocents, since the outcomes - the dead bodies - are the same.) Others think that it's the state of mind of the agent that matters – an action which is done from bad motives but produces good results is morally equivalent to a malice-driven deed with worse results (see, for example, the complaints about the motives of the Coalition in entering Iraq: even if overthrowing the tyrant was a genuinely good outcome, the intervention was wrong, on this view, because the motives of Bush and Blair were not entirely altruistic.)
The moral equivalence approach to the cartoons dispute seems to be of this latter form. It suggests that both sides in the dispute think they're defending a central value of their culture, that both sides regard the other as a serious threat to that value, and that both sides see their outrage as justified by the profound moral failings of their adversaries. So far, so symmetrical; and the impression is given that this symmetry is what supports the equivalence claim. If the proponents of one side claim that they have the advantage of being morally in the right, so that equivalence claims are misplaced, then it can be pointed out to them that the proponents of the other side would make exactly the same claim. On this view of the dispute, each side is just as sincere as the other, and there is no way of telling the moral difference from inside either of the two competing perspectives. Therefore it appears that really, in moral terms, the two sides are equivalent.
Perhaps what lies behind this claim is some deep subjectivism in ethics, some profound commitment to the view that the way things seem to the moral protagonist has decisive normative force: as long as an agent is entirely sincere, there's a sense in which she can't be criticized – she's doing what she truly believes to be right. And if both sides truly believe themselves to be right, then the equivalence claim might seem to be the most attractive one – there's nothing to choose between the two sides, morally speaking. But this claim, and in particular its privileging of sincerity, is very dubious indeed. I'll put to one side the (depressingly plausible) suggestion that some of those in the religious-sensitivity camp are not entirely sincere, and that to some extent the rage that has been shown on that side has been whipped up for the usual political reasons. Let us suppose that everyone on the sensitivity side of the debate is as sincere in their outrage as some of them undoubtedly are, and let us also suppose that everyone on the freedom-of-speech side is just as sincere, with no hidden agendas. Now we have what looks like a highly symmetrical situation: each side sincerely believes itself to be right, as well as sharing all those other features already mentioned – defence of a central cultural value, and so forth. Is that enough to demonstrate moral equivalence? Does that show that neither side can be justified in claiming to have a morally more compelling view?
Consider a different symmetry: in the 1930s and 1940s the Nazis raged at the (supposed) moral depravity of the Jews. They believed the Jews to be a poison in the body politic, a threat to fundamental moral values, a threat to the future of Europe and to the future of the whole world. At least some of them believed this sincerely; indeed, it's quite possible that most if not all of them believed it sincerely. On the other hand, the Jews, and many others who opposed Nazism, sincerely believed the Nazis to be a terrible danger to the body politic, a threat to fundamental moral values, a threat to the future of Europe and to the future of the whole world. And they too felt that their rage at their adversaries was justified by the depths of moral degradation into which the Nazis had sunk.
With careful selection, it's possible to present the two competing views here symmetrically, especially with regard to sincerity. Both groups really did believe that they saw the truth. Is that enough to warrant a claim of moral equivalence?
Well, no. In that dispute, incomparably more dreadful than the cartoon wars, one side really was right. (It wasn't the Nazis, by the way.) And that's true in many disputes. If it weren't, it's hard to see what would be the point of any debate on moral matters. What made those who opposed the Nazis right were features of their views and actions other than those they held in common with their mortal enemies, features whose moral significance their adversaries simply didn't grasp.
The fact that it's sometimes very hard to tell which are the important features, and hence which side of a dispute (if either) is right, shouldn't incline us to think that there's no such thing as being right, independent of sincerely-held beliefs. What it should incline us to think is that we need a bit of humility about our views, that we may always be wrong, that we may learn from those with whom we disagree, and hence that we should ensure that all views have a chance to get heard, free from threat and intimidation. This is standard liberalism, and it's likely to be pointed out at this stage that not everyone accepts liberalism, and that some people have a commitment to their basic values so deep that they can't be expected to permit criticism of them in the liberal manner.
The first part of that point is true, of course; and the answer to the second part is that unfortunately there's more than one group in that position, indeed there may be many of them, and if all are allowed to protect their values from the dishonour of being criticized in ways which are unacceptable to their proponents then we're providing a recipe either for recurrent violence or for the oppressive rule of the most dictatorial among us. Furthermore, those who manage to refrain from demanding that their views should be protected from criticism and mockery may hold their most cherished beliefs quite as strongly as anyone else; their tolerance for hearing these views criticized and mocked is due solely to... their greater tolerance. They can see how much we all need to be tolerant, and tolerated.
Even those who don't accept the argument for freedom of speech based on our epistemic frailty, our need to learn from the criticism of others, should endorse it on the grounds that no one has yet come up with a better way of handling the problem of ensuring that people with strong and contradictory beliefs can live together in relative peace. (Eve Garrard)