Received this latest issue of Imprimis today from Hillsdale
College. Here is an excellent commentary on Islamic suppression of free speech.
Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the
following credit line is used: “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a
publication of Hillsdale College.”
Nelson Abdullah
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
February 2011
Paul Marshall,
Senior Fellow,
Hudson Institute
PAUL MARSHALL is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for
Religious Freedom. He has published widely in newspapers and magazines,
including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the
Washington Post, First Things, The New Republic, and The
Weekly Standard. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books on
religion and politics, including Their Blood Cries Out, Religious Freedom in
the World, and Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.
Most recently he is the co-author, with Nina Shea, of Silenced: How Apostasy
and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College’s
Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in
Washington, D.C., on February 3, 2012.
A growing threat to our freedom of speech is the attempt to stifle
religious discussion in the name of preventing “defamation of” or “insults to”
religion, especially Islam. Resulting restrictions represent, in effect, a
revival of blasphemy laws.
Few in the West were concerned with such laws 20 years ago. Even if still on
some statute books, they were only of historical interest. That began to change
in 1989, when the late Ayatollah Khomeini, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, declared
it the duty of every Muslim to kill British-based writer Salman Rushdie on the
grounds that his novel, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous. Rushdie
has survived by living his life in hiding. Others connected with the book were
not so fortunate: its Japanese translator was assassinated, its Italian
translator was stabbed, its Norwegian publisher was shot, and 35 guests at a
hotel hosting its Turkish publisher were burned to death in an arson attack.
More recently, we have seen eruptions of violence in reaction to Theo van
Gogh’s and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s film Submission, Danish and Swedish
cartoons depicting Mohammed, the speech at Regensburg by Pope Benedict XVI on
the topic of faith, reason, and religious violence, Geert Wilders’ film
Fitna, and a false Newsweek report that the U.S. military had
desecrated Korans at Guantanamo. A declaration by Terry Jones—a deservedly
obscure Florida pastor with a congregation of less than 50—that he would burn a
Koran on September 11, 2010, achieved a perfect media storm, combining American
publicity-seeking, Muslim outrage, and the demands of 24 hour news coverage. It
even drew the attention of President Obama and senior U.S. military leaders.
Dozens of people were murdered as a result.
Such violence in response to purported religious insults is not simply
spontaneous. It is also stoked and channeled by governments for political
purposes. And the objects and victims of accusations of religious insults are
not usually Westerners, but minorities and dissidents in the Muslim world. As
Nina Shea and I show in our recent book Silenced, accusations of
blasphemy or insulting Islam are used systematically in much of that world to
send individuals to jail or to bring about intimidation through threats,
beatings, and killings.
The Danish cartoons of Mohammed were published in Denmark’s largest
newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September 2005. Some were reproduced by
newspapers in Muslim countries in order to criticize them. There was no violent
response. Violence only erupted after a December 2005 summit in Saudi Arabia of
the Organization of the Islamic Conference—now the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC). The summit was convened to discuss sectarian violence and
terrorism, but seized on the cartoons and urged its member states to rouse
opposition. It was only in February 2006—five months after the cartoons were
published—that Muslims across Africa, Asia, and the Mideast set out from Friday
prayers for often violent demonstrations, killing over 200 people.
The highly controlled media in Egypt and Jordan raised the cartoon issue so
persistently that an astonishing 98 percent of Egyptians and 99 percent of
Jordanians—knowing little else of Denmark—had heard of them. Saudi Arabia and
Egypt urged boycotts of Danish products. Iran and Syria manipulated riots partly
to deflect attention from their nuclear projects. Turkey used the cartoons as
bargaining chips in negotiations with the U.S. over appointments to NATO.
Editors in Algeria, Jordan, India, and Yemen were arrested—and in Syria,
journalist Adel Mahfouz was charged with “insulting public religious
sentiment”—for suggesting a peaceful response to the controversy. Lars Vilks’
later and more offensive 2007 Swedish cartoons and Geert Wilders’ 2008 film
Fitna led to comparatively little outcry, demonstrating further that
public reactions are government-driven.
Repression based on charges of blasphemy and apostasy, of course, goes far
beyond the stories typically covered in our media. Currently, millions of
Baha’is and Ahmadis—followers of religions or interpretations that arose after
Islam—are condemned en masse as insulters of Islam, and are subject to
discriminatory laws and attacks by mobs, vigilantes, and terrorists. The Baha’i
leadership in Iran is in prison, and there is no penalty in Iran for killing a
Baha’i. In Somalia, al Shebaab, an Islamist group that controls much of that
country, is systematically hunting down and killing Christians. In 2009, after
allegations that a Koran had been torn, a 1,000-strong mob with Taliban links
rampaged through Christian neighborhoods in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province,
killing seven people, six of whom, including two children, were burned alive.
Pakistani police did not intervene.
Throughout the Muslim world, Sunni, Shia, and Sufi Muslims may be persecuted
for differing from the version of Islam promulgated by locally hegemonic
religious authorities. Saudi Arabia represses Shiites, especially Ismailis. Iran
represses Sunnis and Sufis. In Egypt, Shia leaders have been imprisoned and
tortured.
In Afghanistan, Shia scholar Ali Mohaqeq Nasab, editor of Haqooq-i-Zen
magazine, was imprisoned by the government for publishing “un-Islamic” articles
that criticized stoning as a punishment for adultery. Saudi democracy activists
Ali al-Demaini, Abdullah al-Hamed, and Matruk al-Faleh were imprisoned for using
“un-Islamic terminology,” such as “democracy” and “human rights,” when calling
for a written constitution. Saudi teacher Mohammed al-Harbi was sentenced to 40
months in jail and 750 lashes for “mocking religion” after discussing the Bible
in class and making pro-Jewish remarks. Egyptian Nobel prize winner in
literature Naguib Mahfouz reluctantly abandoned his lifelong resistance to
censorship and sought permission from the clerics of Al-Azhar University to
publish his novel Children of Gebelawi, hitherto banned for blasphemy.
Mahfouz subsequently lived under constant protection after being stabbed by a
young Islamist, leaving him partly paralyzed.
After Mohammed Younas Shaikh, a member of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission,
raised questions about Pakistan’s policies in Kashmir, he was charged with
having blasphemed in one of his classes. In Bangladesh, Salahuddin Choudhury was
imprisoned for hurting “religious feelings” by advocating peaceful relations
with Israel. In Iran, Ayatollah Boroujerdi was imprisoned for arguing that
“political leadership by clergy” was contrary to Islam, and cleric Mohsen
Kadivar was imprisoned for “publishing untruths and disturbing public minds”
after writing Theories of the State in Shiite Jurisprudence, which
questioned the legal basis of Ayatollah Khomeini’s view of government. Other
charges brought against Iranians include “fighting against God,” “dissension
from religious dogma,” “insulting Islam,” “propagation of spiritual liberalism,”
“promoting pluralism,” and, my favorite, “creating anxiety in the minds of …
Iranian officials.”
Muslim reformers cannot escape being attacked even in the West. In 2006, a
group called Al-Munasirun li Rasul al Allah emailed over 30 prominent reformers
in the West, threatening to kill them unless they repented. Among its targets
was Egyptian Saad Eddin Ibrahim, perhaps the best known human rights activist in
the Arab world. Another was Ahmad Subhy Mansour, an imam who was imprisoned and
had to flee Egypt, in part for his arguments against the death penalty for
apostasy. The targets were pronounced “guilty of apostasy, unbelief, and denial
of the Islamic established facts” and given three days to “announce their
repentance.” The message included their addresses and the names of their spouses
and children.
Mimount Bousakla, a Belgian senator and daughter of Moroccan immigrants, was
forced into hiding by threats of “ritual slaughter” for her criticism of the
treatment of women in Muslim communities and of fundamentalist influences in
Belgian mosques. Turkish-born Ekin Deligoz, the first Muslim member of Germany’s
Parliament, received death threats and was placed under police protection after
she called for Muslim women to “take off the head scarf.”
But the story gets worse. Western governments have begun to give in to
demands from the Saudi-based OIC and others for controls on speech. In Austria,
for instance, Elisabeth Sabbaditsch-Wolf has been convicted of “denigrating
religious beliefs” for her comments about Mohammed during a seminar on radical
Islam. Canada’s grossly misnamed “human rights commissions” have hauled
writers—including Mark Steyn, who teaches as a distinguished fellow in
journalism at Hillsdale College—before tribunals to interrogate them about their
writings on Islam. And in Holland and Finland, respectively, politicians Geert
Wilders and Jussi Halla-aho have been prosecuted for their comments on Islam in
political speeches.
In America, the First Amendment still protects against the criminalization of
criticizing Islam. But we face at least two threats still. The first is
extra-legal intimidation of a kind already endemic in the Muslim world and
increasing in Europe. In 2009, Yale University Press, in consultation with Yale
University, removed all illustrations of Mohammed from its book by Jytte Klausen
on the Danish cartoon crisis. It also removed Gustave DorĂ©’s 19th-century
illustration of Mohammed in hell from Dante’s Inferno. Yale’s formal
press statement stressed the earlier refusal by American media outlets to show
the cartoons, and noted that their “republication…has repeatedly resulted in
violence around the world.”
Another publisher, Random House, rejected at the last minute a historical
romance novel about Mohammed’s wife, Jewel of Medina, by American
writer Sherry Jones. They did so to protect “the safety of the author, employees
of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in
distribution and sale of the novel.”
The comedy show South Park refused to show an image of Mohammed in a
bear suit, although it mocked figures from other religions. In response, Molly
Norris, a cartoonist for the Seattle Weekly, suggested an “Everybody
Draw Mohammed Day.” She quickly withdrew the suggestion and implied that she had
been joking. But after several death threats, including from Al-Qaeda, the FBI
advised her that she should go into hiding—which she has now done under a new
name.
In 2010, Zachary Chesser, a young convert to Islam, pleaded guilty to
threatening the creators of South Park. And on October 3, 2011,
approximately 800 newspapers refused to run a “Non Sequitur” cartoon drawn by
Wiley Miller that merely contained a bucolic scene with the caption “Where’s
Muhammad?”
Many in our media claim to be self-censoring out of sensitivity to religious
feelings, but that claim is repeatedly undercut by their willingness to mock and
criticize religions other than Islam. As British comedian Ben Elton observed:
“The BBC will let vicar gags pass, but they would not let imam gags pass. They
might pretend that it’s, you know, something to do with their moral
sensibilities, but it isn’t. It’s because they’re scared.”
The second threat we face is the specter of cooperation between our
government and the OIC to shape speech about Islam. A first indication of this
came in President Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009, when he declared that he has a
responsibility to “fight against negative stereotypes of Islam whenever they
appear.” Then in July of last year in Istanbul, Secretary of State Clinton
co-chaired—with the OIC—a “High-Level Meeting on Combating Religious
Intolerance.” There, Mrs. Clinton announced another conference with the OIC,
this one in Washington, to “exchange ideas” and discuss “implementation”
measures our government might take to combat negative stereotyping of Islam.
This would not restrict free speech, she said. But the mere fact of U.S.
government partnership with the OIC is troublesome. Certainly it sends a
dangerous signal, as suggested by the OIC’s Secretary-General, Ekmeleddin
Ihsanoglu, when he commented in Istanbul that the Obama administration stands
“united” with the OIC on speech issues.
The OIC’s charter commits it “to combat defamation of Islam.” Its current
action plan calls for “deterrent punishments” to counter “Islamophobia.” In
2009, an official OIC organ, the “International Islamic Fiqh [Jurisprudence]
Academy,” issued fatwas calling for speech bans, including “international
legislation,” to protect “the interests and values of [Islamic] society.” The
OIC does not define what speech should be outlawed, but the repressive practices
of its leading member states speak for themselves.
The conference Secretary Clinton announced in Istanbul was held in Washington
on December 12-14, 2011, and was closed to the public, with the “Chatham House
Rule” restricting the participants (this rule prohibits the identification of
who says what, although general content is not confidential).
Presentations
reportedly focused on America’s deficiencies in its treatment of Muslims and
stressed that the U.S. has something to learn in this regard from the other
delegations—including Saudi Arabia, despite its ban on Christian churches, its
repression of its Shiite population, its textbooks teaching that Jews should be
killed, and the fact that it beheaded a woman for sorcery on the opening day of
the conference.
* * *
The encroachment of de facto blasphemy restrictions in the West
threatens free speech and the free exchange of ideas. Nor will it bring social
peace and harmony. As comedian Rowan Atkinson warns, such laws produce “a veneer
of tolerance concealing a snake pit of unaired and unchallenged views.” Norway’s
far-reaching restrictions on “hate speech” did not prevent Anders Behring
Breivik from slaughtering over 70 people because of his antipathy to Islam:
indeed, his writings suggest that he engaged in violence because he believed
that he could not otherwise be heard.
In the Muslim world, such restrictions enable Islamists to crush debate.
After Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was murdered early last year by his
bodyguards for opposing blasphemy laws, his daughter Sara observed: “This is a
message to every liberal to shut up or be shot.” Or in the words of Nasr
Abu-Zayd, a Muslim scholar driven out of Egypt: “Charges of apostasy and
blasphemy are key weapons in the fundamentalists’ arsenal, strategically
employed to prevent reform of Muslim societies, and instead confine the world’s
Muslim population to a bleak, colourless prison of socio-cultural and political
conformity.”
President Obama should put an end to discussion of speech with the OIC. He
should declare clearly that in free societies, all views and all religions are
subject to criticism and contradiction. As the late Abdurrahman Wahid, former
president of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, and head of
Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organization, wrote in his foreword
to Silenced, blasphemy laws
. . . narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse. . . not only about religion,
but also about vast spheres of life, literature, science, and culture in
general. . . . Rather than legally stifle criticism and debate—which will only
encourage Muslim fundamentalists in their efforts to impose a spiritually void,
harsh, and monolithic understanding of Islam upon all the world—Western
authorities should instead firmly defend freedom of expression. . . .
America’s Founders, who had broken with an old order that was rife with
religious persecution and warfare, forbade laws impeding free exercise of
religion, abridging freedom of speech, or infringing freedom of the press. We
today must do likewise.
Copyright © 2011 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are
not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. Permission to reprint in whole
or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used:
“Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” SUBSCRIPTION FREE
UPON REQUEST. ISSN
0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trade Office #1563325.
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