The irony was blatant and disheartening and sad, but perhaps with a lesson for us.

On a London holiday last weekend, I took advantage of a walk somewhere else to cut between Westminster Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament, just for the experience.

What I actually found was a fiery, though mostly peaceful, demonstration of several hundred Muslims against the dumb, 13-minute anti-Islam Innocence of Muslims video that has provoked riots in Muslim countries around the world, with more than 50 deaths, as well as a fatwa against the filmmaker.

But this was in the very heart of one of the worlds great democracies, literally in the shadow of the House of Commons, where there is the renowned Question Time and the traditional exchange of shouted challenges and insults over public policies.

Yet one of the signs carried by some demonstrators said: Freedom of speech is not freedom to abuse.

Yes it is.

In the United Kingdom, the U.S. and democracies around the world, freedom of speech is the freedom to say almost anything (excepting the fire-in-the-theatre clear and present danger) with the democratic belief that such unfettered debate ultimately will produce the best understanding, ideas, solutions and outcomes.

Those protestors in Parliament Square raging against freedom of speech were enjoying the protection of British democracy. Hopefully, the religious zeal-fueled irony was not lost on the most thoughtful among them.

But the headlines and TV reports, of course, have been mostly about the least thoughtful, the angry, violent and hate-filled minority of Muslims in Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and some other Muslim and Arab countries.

Minority, you ask? These mobs?

Excerpt from:

Frank Denton: Freedom of speech versus fatwa