I am thinking about.....

Muhammad. The Prophet Muhammad. A couple of weeks ago, we invited a friend of ours, who is Muslim, to dinner. Mustafa is Turkish and had just brought his new wife back to live with him in Georgia. Mustafa was our guide when my husband and I traveled through Turkey. We have remained friends ever since. We have had him to dinner at our house many times, but somehow this time, with a new wife, it was different. An hour before the newlyweds were to arrive, I had a sudden moment of panic. "Do we have any images of Muhammad around?," I blurted out to my husband. He looked at me like I had lost my mind. But, it was a reasonable fear. We are collectors of folk art, mostly Southern, but we collect from wherever we are in the world. And, to be honest, some folk art can be irreverent, very irreverent.

No indeed, we did not have a single image. I may not have been so sensitive about this before the murders at the Paris magazine, Charlie Hebdo or the more recent killings in Denmark. Now I am.

We are so comfortable with images depicting other religious figures. These images are so abundant, it is hard for many of us to grasp how offensive it may be for Muslims to see a physical image of Muhammad.

I challenged myself to think if I was still the head of a large news organization whether I would have shown the offending images of Muhammad in Charlie Hebdo. The cover of the magazine that came out after the terror attack -the one with Muhammad shedding a tear - was thoughtful to me, but perhaps, still very offensive to some. Is this "free speech" or "hate speech?” The global conversation is complex. The terrorist attack was horrific. The conversation it inspires is vital.

In honor of that conversation, the day after the attack at Charlie Hebdo, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting sent out this notice, "We grieve for the murdered journalists and staff of Charlie Hebdo as well as those who were trying to protect them. In their honor and in support of freedom of the press and freedom of expression, CPB is announcing today a total of $7.5 million to support four of public media's flagship journalism enterprises – 'Frontline,' NPR's international coverage, 'PBS NewsHour' and PRI's 'The World'."

I am grateful for the continuing support for our work in public media. Freedom of speech is one of the grand rights we expect in a democratic society. But does that right include the right to publish hate speech? And who gets to determine if it is hate speech?

I don't have the answer, but I do work at a place that allows me to keep this conversation alive.