I have a new outlet for my work, Arab Weekly. It is a serious newspaper with some fine regular contributors and its editorial team includes a valued friend and colleague from my Abu Dhabi days, Richard Pretorious. This is the fifth item of mine to be published so far; all can be seen at this link. My thanks to the editor for his permission to reproduce these articles here ...
A trawl through history for evidence of countries permitting unqualified freedom of expression would be long and, almost certainly, fruitless.
The common cry on Western lips, more shrill than ever in an age of keyboard antagonists on social media, is: “It’s a free country. I’m entitled to speak my mind.”
The reality is that there always have been limits on what may be said, written and published. Obvious needs to protect national and individual security make it easy to work out why that should be the case.
Five years ago, on January 7, 2015, an evil attack was carried out at the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Twelve people were killed.
No decent person would sympathise with the authors of the crime, the French-Algerian brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. It was an unpardonable act of barbarity dressed up as vengeance for Charlie Hebdo’s irreverent cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
However, when deciding on where the line should be drawn between what is and is not acceptable, a decent person might recognise that the sensibilities of Muslims or worshippers of any faith should be considered.
High-minded lectures from West to East have no real place in the debate. Laws against blasphemy may globally be in decline. The Western intellect may struggle with concepts of restraint, the wisdom of stepping back to avoid touching raw nerves but if there is sincerity in the professed desire to achieve what the French call vivre ensemble — different communities setting aside differences to live together in mutual tolerance — it is wrong-headed to dismiss how hurtful perceived affronts to religious beliefs can be.
How were Dutch Muslims expected to react when the far-right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders marked the closing days of 2019 by reviving a cartoon contest in which entrants were encouraged to mock the Prophet Mohammad?
Wilders can be disregarded as an odious and inflammatory oaf. Yet it is difficult to imagine a snide little competition more calculated to alienate significant numbers of people, which may be precisely what he intended.
The overwhelming majority of those offended would never dream of taking their aggrieved feelings any further.
People conveniently forget that, for all the empty assertions of its perpetrators, terrorism is rarely respectful of age, gender or faith. Men, women and children are all considered legitimate targets, whichever God they worship.
The Kouachis’ psychopathic death lust meant they cared nothing that two French-Algerians were among their victims, one of them a policeman and devout Muslim whom they cynically finished off as he lay wounded in the street.
On the morning after a Tunisian petty criminal drove a 19-tonne lorry along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on Bastille day in 2016, killing 86 people, Ridha Louafi, president of the Cote d’Azur Association of Tunisians, visited the scene.
“Tunisians and other Maghrebis are among the victims, too,” he said, “and they are casualties twice over because of the way people will now regard them, as if they were somehow responsible for the terrible actions of one individual.”
He was right and it would be irresponsible to pretend Western countries are not at risk from Islamist terrorist attacks, whether committed in response to a religious slight or merely following Islamic State (ISIS) exhortations.
ISIS has been defeated militarily but mosques under Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist control continue to preach disturbing messages. Individuals, the so-called “lone wolves” with no direct ISIS guidance, can be turned to violence by exposure to online influences. Prisons too often serve as breeding grounds for extremists, even when weak, impressionable young men enter as no more than minor criminals without political or religious thoughts in their heads.
However, if it is hard to make a compelling case for being more alert to one group’s sensitivities to unfettered expression, there is also a pragmatic argument.
Few doubt that gullible teenagers or young offenders should be discouraged from drifting into extremism. Yet, it is also clear that indoctrinating potential candidates for radicalisation becomes a lot less complicated if they can be made to think they are regarded as inferior or unworthy.
The 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire is credited, among much else, with the very noble thought: “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The words were not actually his but those of a biographer mistakenly attributed to Voltaire. However, they probably reflect his general outlook. That is entirely reasonable, subject to the exceptions sovereign states correctly make when free speech becomes a threat to public order.
There is, on balance, a right in democracies to cause offence but it is interesting to wonder whether Voltaire might have also defended the right of others to feel offended and for that sentiment to be respected.
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