It is exactly a year since the Danish cartoons dominated our newspaper headlines, pushed demonstrators onto London’s streets, and led to riots throughout the Middle East. How would Cambridge mark such an unpleasant anniversary? My fear was that a maverick don might give a controversial interview. Instead, an undergraduate has taken this role upon himself. His actions would be unremarkable were it not for their exclusivity: Clareification’s moment of madness represents only the third of its kind in Britain. The question for us now is whether we take the challenge seriously or not.

For most commentators, the cartoons controversy was a matter of free speech conflicting with religious sensitivities. Judging by the comments left on The Times website, this remains peoples’ main concern. “Freedom of expression is well and truly dead in the very cradle of liberty”, laments one writer. In response to the rumour that Clare College might send down the offending student, others ask how our elite institution can bear to curtail its own liberty.

A university should not be trapped within forced oppositions like this. Our concerns differ from those of a newspaper. Freedom of speech is a bugbear for the media; we should be more worried about the quality of that speech. To target liberty against Islamophobia as another example of civilizations clashing is to miss the mark. Our role in an elite institution is to question the assumptions that are fed our way.

There can be little question that the cartoons were Islamophobic: they were designed to mock a prophet who is precious to Muslims at a time when Islam is passing through a particularly painful chapter. At the same time, the freedom of speech is a right that few of us would wish to see jeopardized.

The real issue is why we would be content to leave this conflict dumped at the crossroads. A university is best placed to pick its way through the complex histories behind the Danish cartoons and advise journalists and policy-makers in the wider world. That it has been left to a vulnerable undergraduate to make a reckless gesture should tell us something about the void he thought he was filling.

What could be the Clareification, we might ask, of a Muslim’s disquiet not with the manner of free speech but the matter of depicting a prophet at all? The differences between a Sunni mosque devoid of such an image and the Shi’ite posters one might find in a Karbala market reflect tensions of great significance. Contained within a caricature of Mohammed is a theological thread that can be traced from scripture to an event like the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001. Nor is it unique to Islam. A trip of just fifteen miles up the road would take us to Ely’s lady chapel where we can see the effects of a puritan hatred of images on a wall of statued saints.

These moments of conflict between and within religious groups are given even more weight when we consider the social issues of division and immigration. What does Clareified free speech really have to say about such long and global struggles being played out in our society today?

The question now is whether we take the challenge seriously or not

This week, the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo is engaged in a court case against two Islamic organisations which are suing for “public insults against a group of people because they belong to a religion”. The magazine has responded with a barrage of new cartoons lampooning Mohammed, Muslim leader Dalil Boubakeur, and the Qur’an. Presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, with one eye on the April elections and another on the riots that have ripped through the banlieues, has publicly defended the caricatures. For the French, as with other European countries, these matters go to the heart of a debate surrounding the assimilation of new religious influences within an established constitution. Britain remains unusual in that it is still defining, rather than implementing, its multicultural model.

To compare Charlie and Clare in this way is to bear witness to how differently we do things here. According to the newspapers last weekend, both the president of Clare’s student union and the senior tutor have issued apologies for the publication and have distanced themselves from any ramifications. One report even has the guest editor hiding out in a safe house, fearful for his well-being. This curious blend of public scapegoating and private sympathy is a telling illustration of how the British deal with religious conflict. But it goes nowhere to resolving the issues at stake.

Individual nations and institutions engage in the dialogue between religion and society in different ways. As a British university, we must be conscious of the doubly unique role it can play in that dialogue. To accept the simplistic clash between religion and free speech is as poor a reflection of our abilities as playing with cartoons. So too is leaving our youngest members to make mistakes and then threatening them with expulsion. It is our privilege to be at the forefront of social, religious and constitutional debate. How we hold ourselves through this episode will say a great deal about how much we value that privilege.

James Noyes