When is it justified to do something knowing it will offend adherents of a major world religion? Can such a thing ever be justified? This question raised its head recently over the publication, originally in Denmark, of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Enraged by the cartoons, large numbers of Muslims around the world stormed Danish embassies and marched the streets with menacing placards calling for the death of anyone who insults Islam. At the time of writing, these convulsions have cost five people their lives. Even in New Zealand, eight hundred people marched up Queen Street on February 5 2006, announcing to the world how offended they were. There has been talk of a lack of tolerance, of gratuitously insulting Kiwi Muslims' faith, and so on.

First of all, let's examine briefly the case for the prohibition on images in Islam. It is true that Islamic law and custom holds such a representation to be blasphemous and deeply offensive. Muslims see Allah as incomparably unique and insist on an unbridgeable gulf between the creator and his creatures. Any attempt to intercede between humanity and Allah is bound to fail and bound to be tinged with wickedness. The passages in the Qur'an which deal with this are, to twenty-first century readers, cryptic. One passage asks rhetorically how an artist can hope to accomplish the task of representing in art the creation of Allah. ‘Who is he that can intercede with Him but by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them. And they encompass nothing of his knowledge except what He pleases.’ (2:255) And, reminiscent of the Hebrew prophet Amos, the Qur'an asks rhetorically: ‘Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend? They descend upon every lying, sinful one – They give ear, and most of them are liars. And the poets – the deviators follow them.’ (26: 221-224) The Hadith are more straightforward in their denunciation of art. One Hadith speaks of Aisha (Muhammad's third wife) telling of a curtain with birds drawn on it. ‘The Messenger of Allah said to me “Change them, [they bring] to my mind [the pleasures of] the worldly life.”’ (Hadith 5255) And in another Hadith, Aisha is told ‘The most grievous torment from the Hand of Allah on the Day of Resurrection would be for those who imitate Allah in the act of His creation.’ (Hadith, 5261)

Related to this is the Muslim horror of worshiping idols. The Qur'an has many blood-curdling warnings against the worship of idols. And as we know from other religions, Christianity among them, idols are frequently carved, adorned or painted and end up becoming objects of veneration in themselves. So Muslims have an abiding fear that representations of Allah or Muhammad would themselves become objects of veneration, which would have the effect of bridging the gap between Allah and humans – the gap they believe cannot be bridged in any way other than submission to His will.

Having said this, it is important to note that Islam is not hostile to art as a whole. The point being made is that, like other monotheist religions, Islam insists on the right to circumscribe art until it conforms to its view of the world. In this way, mosques around the world may have beautiful art all over them, but the art is never representational.

Or almost never. What the protesters did not tell us is that there are some representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Muslim art. I have seen a series of Ottoman miniatures from the late sixteenth century featuring apocryphal moments in the Prophet's life. As a concession to mainstream Muslim sensibilities, art of this type covers Muhammad's face with a white cloth.

Now, here comes the rub. There is also a representation, from within the Muslim tradition, of Muhammad sitting under an awning overseeing the massacre of three hundred Jewish men, as mentioned in Qur'an: ‘And he drove down those of the People of the Book who backed them from their fortresses and He cast awe into their hearts; some you killed and you took captive some.’ (33: 26-7) This incident refers to the battle of al-Khandaq (5 AH, or 627 CE), the third confrontation between Muhammad and his Madinah supporters and the heretics of Makkah. Muhammad believed that he had been betrayed in that battle by the Jewish tribe the Qurayza. After the battle Muhammad had three hundred of the men killed in front of him and the women and children sold into slavery. Now this massacre is one of the very few times that Muhammad has been depicted in a historical scene. Presumably this scene was judged sufficiently worthy of artistic commemoration.

I doubt I am alone in finding this image thoroughly offensive. In a text purporting to be the Word of Allah himself, mention is made of an ugly massacre, an act of vengeance. Not only is there no remorse for such a shameful act, it is glorified by being depicted in one of the few instances of figurative representation of Muhammad.

It would be encouraging to see some sense of remorse from the Muslim community, or a felt need to make some sort of recompense, but no. In fact, the response to the cartoons across the Muslim world has been unhelpful–to say the least of it–with newspapers across the Muslim world vying with each other to produce cartoons of the Holocaust designed to be offensive to Jews. It is noteworthy that the Muslims vented their rage so quickly against the Jews, who have had no part whatever to play in the cartoons which precipitated all this fuss. A major part of any Muslim Reformation to come will have to be a comprehensive re-examination of their anxious and bitter hatred of the Jewish people and religion.

So where should humanists stand in all this? Should The Open Society publish the cartoons? The answer seems to go like this. The Open Society reserves the right to reprint those offending cartoons, should it have the right context to do so. As humanists, we are not bound by Muslim law. We do not recognise Muslim law as having the supernatural foundations of truth Muslims claim for it. And as citizens of a secular democracy, we have rights of free expression which we cherish a great deal, not least because they were hard won. These and other rights are a fundamental part of our humanist heritage which we hold dear. This heritage pre-dates Islam, going back to ancient Greece. And these are rights which, by and large, do not exist in Muslim countries, much to their discredit.

But there would need to be an appropriate context to the publication of material like that. Little is served by making a point of offending other citizens of the democracy in which we live. For a democracy to work, some forbearance from all sides is required. This journal has made a point of printing material highly critical of elements of Muslim thought, history and culture. We do this in the belief that ongoing dialogue, even critical dialogue, is the stuff of progress. We are not intent on offending any group gratuitously, and we have always opened our pages to our critics, a courtesy very rarely reciprocated. Muslims could well take the call for forbearance to heart. We do not see Jews destroying property in protest at Muslim representations of Muhammad overseeing the killing of Jews. Nor do humanists protest against the scandalous, one-sided slander against 'unbelievers' that runs through the most Muslim thought, from the Qur'an onwards. And, despite vicious persecution throughout the Muslim world, we see little protest from homosexuals about the adolescent homophobia of the Muslim societies.

Eight years ago, during the controversy over the Virgin in a Condom piece by Tania Kovats, William Shepard, a religious studies scholar at Canterbury University, made a worthwhile point that most important new innovations of thought are offensive to someone. The Buddha was a source of offence to reactionary, ritual-bound Brahmins, as Jesus was to urban, established Jews. Muhammad was a source of offence to traditional worshippers in Makkah as well as to Christians and Jews of Arabia. And atheists, of course, are offensive to lots of people because they are a standing challenge to the so-called link between God and morality. Virtually all important new developments in science, the arts, philosophy and government have trodden on someone's toes. Like it nor not, giving offence is a driving force of civilisation, and it is to set a dangerous precedent whereby we predetermine what is and what is not important by the ability of one group to work up a major sweat about it.

The trick lies in understanding the difference between giving offence in the name of some higher good, and causing gratuitous injury for no valid reason. There are no clear rules for delineating this boundary, and the process of delineation is what open societies are best able to allow. A fluid combination of reason and empathy are (as with most things) the best guide to distinguishing the difference. But its clearest starting-point is a generous dose of modesty with respect to championing a higher good.

Toleration of others in an open society means, in some cases, tolerating things one really doesn't like. Muslims need to wake up and recognise that, in secular Western democracies, there will be a lot of things they won't approve of. But tolerate them they must, as we all must. The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ), issued a press release on February 8, which, in the main is a commendable call for reason and toleration. But it speaks of freedom of expression carrying with it responsibilities alongside the rights. We agree, and turn back the call to take responsibility on the Muslim community, to purge itself of its own long history of anti-Semitism, as well as its unwillingness to share public discourse with those of other beliefs. A core value of the open society is the ability to support the democratic process even when one's own views are not responded to as one would wish. The day that being offended by something becomes a standard by which freedom of expression is condoned is the day we lay the wreath for freedom of expression.

Bill Cooke is the Editor in Chief of The Open Society, Asia-Pacific Coordinator of the Center for Inquiry, a Senior Editor of Free Inquiry and a spokesman for the NZARH.