No offence (3)

On a chilly evening in Le Lavandou, we dined alone at L'Auberge Provençale. There were no other customers, the empty tables making a mockery of the owners’ efforts to create a bright, welcoming ambiance.

Voltaire: Ulster needs you
Picture: Jaime2k6.

The meal – we both chose from a set menu, with rougets as starter followed by magret de canard – was simple but excellent, with a pleasant bottle of Provençal red, from the Domaine de l'Angueiroun just three miles away, to accompany it.

Every attempt was made to make us feel comfortable; the first question when we booked was whether we’d like to sit by the log fire. The bill – 79 euros, which also included a bottle of Evian and a shared dessert – was reasonable enough to send us away satisfied that we'd had value for money.

The owners would be pleased with the above words. If this blog were widely read in Le Lavandou, they might even print them out and stick them on the wall, though it would mar the decor.

But what if our experience of L'Auberge Provençale hadn’t seemed so good? What if the mullet had tasted rubbery and the duck slices been so hard you could have bounced them on the table, unconcerned about the risk of knocking over the wine bottle, so awful were its contents?

Would I be as entitled to say as much, in a newspaper or magazine or on line, as I clearly was to report more favourably?

Does anyone seriously believe the answer to that question is other than Yes?

Sadly, a jury of good men (and women) and true in Northern Ireland saw things a little differently. They have just awarded £25,000 in damages, plus m’learned friends’ costs, against the Irish News after a restaurateur complained that a review was defamatory, damaging and hurtful.

The Irish News, in my experience, is a decent daily paper. It is traditionally read by Ulster's nationalist population but is unrecognisable from the days when death notices for terrorists would be enclosed within thick black borders and few Protestants would think of buying a copy.

Its food critic, Caroline Workman, sounds as if she is something of an authority in her field, having had some training in London restaurants and edited the Bridgestone restaurant guide.

She described her visit with friends to the west Belfast pizzeria as "hugely disappointing". The pate did not have much flavour, the flesh of her squid was a grey, translucent colour and her cola drink tasted unchilled, watery and flat.

There was plenty more she did not like about the meal and her rating, one mark out of five, was said to translate as "Stay at home".

The restaurateur considered the review a "hatchet job" and warmly greeted the jury's verdict as evidence that justice had been done.

On the face of it, the verdict is no such thing.

For all I know, there may be no finer place to eat in Ulster than this pizzeria, whatever the reviewer felt.

Nor do I especially blame people for taking advantage of libel laws that are loaded so heavily against the press. Declaring what others might see as an interest, I should add that another Ulster jury did once award damages against my then employers over an article I had written.

The story is told so as to demonstrate that the human desire to censor is not restricted to Muslims who resort to French law in the hope of punishing a magazine for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

That case should never have been allowed inside a courtroom. At least it now stands a good chance of being thrown out, after the prosecutor argued for the dismissal of criminal charges.

But what conclusion should we draw from the case of the pizzeria and the scathing food critic?

If we accept that Ms Workman is telling the truth when she says the review represented her honest opinion, the logic of the outcome is plain: only a dishonest opinion or none at all would have been acceptable in the eyes of Northern Irish justice. And that seems unacceptable in any part of the world that regards itself as a democracy.

No offence

It is always a pleasure to talk to the listeners of BBC Radio Ulster, as I did yesterday, not least because during long years of covering the Troubles, I grew very fond of the city in which it is based.

The station called last night, wanting some thoughts on the case of the Muslim organisations that have taken the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to court for re-running the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that caused such offence when they appeared in a Danish publication.

I have no strong views on Charlie Hebdo, which I see rarely but have found by turns funny (which is fine), irreverent (ditto) and tasteless (see the view on free speech attributed to Voltaire).

There is no doubt that many decent Muslims will have been appalled to see - or, rather more likely, to learn second or third or fourth hand about - the cartoons.

One showed Mohammed perched on a cloud turning suicide bombers away from paradise with the words: "Stop, stop. We are running out of virgins."

But I am not sure how this insults any Muslims except terrorist Muslims.

If, as has been shown, some fanatics are motivated, at least in part, by the belief that dozens of virgins await them once they have blown themselves and others to smithereens, there is no reason on earth why that belief should not be ridiculed.

The French Muslim Council, and the Paris Grand Mosque, both involved directly or indirectly in the current case, are right to ask for Islam to be respected, but wrong to suppose that it should be given automatic legal protection from disrespect.

If real criminal offences are committed - incitement to murder Muslims, for example, or to burn down their mosques - then the law has ample remedies. Words and cartoons mocking Islamist psychopaths who turn to terrorism are not in the same category and should not be liable to legal sanction.

Philippe Val, Charlie Hebdo's editor, argued that the cartoons did not amount to an attack on Islam but addressed "the ideas defended by certain men who legitimise violence in the name of Islam". What is so wrong in that?

Nothing, I am belatedly pleased to add, according to the prosecution, which asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that Charlie Hebdo was not attacking Islam but terrorists who claimed to act in its name or the name of Mohammed.

After talking to Radio Ulster, I thought back to a superb Belfast satirical ensemble, the Hole in the Wall Gang, whose humour was aimed at just about everyone who made Northern Ireland what it then was.

Green or orange, or some shade in between, politicians and pundits and - yes - churchmen were all considered legitimate targets. But isn't that the point? They were legitimate targets of prose and stage routines, not the bombs and bullets that were also a feature of everyday Ulster life and death.

I am sure plenty of Roman Catholic and Protestant figures were outraged by the revue; a few, doubtless, would have liked it silenced. That is human nature; remember that line in Stoppard's Night and Day: "I'm all in favour of the free press. It's the bloody papers I can't stand."

But the Hole in the Wall Gang played on. If memory serves, they eventually found themselves mocked by others.

The court hearing the cartoons case in Paris will announce on March 15 whether it is following the prosecution's recommendation that the charges should be thrown out.

But a lot has already been made in coverage of the hearing of Nicolas Sarkozy's letter of support of Charlie Hebdo.

Though he was often enough on the receiving end of the magazine's wit, he saw such publications as acceptable if not essential components of France's commitment to freedom of expression and a secular public policy. An excess of caricature, he said, was better than an absence of it.

Other politicians followed his example today, giving evidence on the magazine's behalf.

But I liked most of all the contribution of the very first witness.

This is what he had to say:

"I urge Muslims to adapt to Europe and not the other way around."

So which ranting Man of the People had Charlie Hebdo imported from a wicked Anglo-Saxon tabloid? Alternatively, who was the appalling French racist responsible for such provocative testimony.

Step forward one of the heroes of yesterday's proceedings, a philosopher from the Paris University. His name is Abdel Wahhab Meddeb and the defence rests.