How free is speech?

It was in the name of freedom of speech, we are told, that editors across Europe insisted on publishing the highly insulting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (saws). Offending Muslims across the globe was necessary, it appears, to make a point - that freedom of speech is an inviolable right.

The recent remarks by the right wing Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, openly calling for the banning of the Quran by describing it as fascist text at the root of terrorism and calling for the deportation of those who do not agree with the Dutch/European values, has also been protected under the provision of freedom of speech.

So it appears the west will go to great lengths to guarantee this provision, doing so in the face of large demonstrations, threats and backlash. But freedom of speech is a farce and its application selective.

There are numerous ’speech’ related offences across countries that claim to be the bastions of free speech. There are limits and laws that prevent the incitement of racial hatred and incitement to acts of violence and murder. Numerous European countries including Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, and some US states all have acts against blasphemy. In the US, the constitutional right to free speech can be suspended if it is deemed likely to cause imminent lawlessness.

And the scope of speech related offences has been consistently expanded in Britain since 7/7, with the introduction of offences related to the ‘glorification’ of terrorism, a speech crime that can lead to prosecution and lengthy sentencing.

It would appear that whilst preaching freedom of speech, the west acknowledge that speech needs limits, protected by law to prevent society descending into hatred, violence and, ultimately, chaos.

We must also ask what type of a society would emerge if people were granted the ‘right’ to insult, offend and ridicule each other, as a right in itself. For there is a difference between believing ’speak the truth and the truth may offend’ and granting the right to offend per se, a belief upon which western comedy is notoriously premised: at the height of the controversy over the Danish cartoons, arguments that defended an archaic, peculiar and divisive European tradition were mingled with the right to free speech.

Such attitudes erode the common social bonds that gel society by doing away with respect and working in mutual partnership, leading to anti social undercurrents and attitudes, all of which the west is now coincidently trying desperately to confront. How can a society claim to be civilised when it believes it ok to offend and ridicule en mass and then protect the culprits? The growing social breakdown and atomisation of western society all undermine those very claims to civilisation.

In the case of the Danish cartoons and the deafening silence that has met right wing antagonism towards Islam, such as the provocations of Geert Wilders, the western media and parts of its intelligentsia appear to have been keen to make a point particular to Muslims.

The west believes its civilisation is premised on numerous liberties, free speech being one, that cannot be compromised because they were instrumental in unlocking Europe from a prolonged period of ackwardness. A repressive religious authority was ultimately done away with through the triumph of these liberties. As many editorials alluded to then and since, making a stand against a similar backward religious force required, it appeared, that Muslims be taught a lesson: liberal values are sacrosanct, and the west will not be dragged back to the dark ages by a pre-modern, unreformed religious complaint.

Islam and Muslims, however, will not be lectured about the ability to account from those who believe nothing of much value predated their local, continental reformation. A central concept to Islam is the notion of ‘enjoining the good and forbidding the wrong’, an idea which has its own, distinct philosophical origin and which requires society openly challenge and account those charged with managing their affairs, through individual or organised political activity. The routes of this notion are well documented, in ahadith and ayah, and the attitudes of the early Caliphs, such as Abu Bakr (ra), requesting he be challenged if he failed to obey Allah (swt) and his Messenger (saws), and numerous others challenges to leading Companions over the administration of public affairs, such as was the case with Omar bin al Khattab and the distribution of the spoils.

Importantly, in this debate about free speech, Muslims are not afraid of being challenged about their beliefs or debating, explaining, or proving them. The Islamic doctrine is built on a rational, intellectual basis that requires thinking as part of adopting its creed, versus blind or ancestral faith. This is poignantly described in the challenge that Allah (swt) puts forward for those who rejected the message of the Prophet Mohammed (saws), and who often resorted to mocking, ridicule and even physical violence against his Companions.

Allah (swt) says in Surah al-Baqarah Verse 23: “And if you are in doubt concerning that which We have sent down (i.e. the Qur’ân) to Our slave (Muhammad (saws)), then produce a Sûrah (chapter) of the like thereof and call your witnesses (supporters and helpers) besides Allâh, if you are truthful.”

The challenge is intellectual and is issued to the masters of the language in which the Quran is written - produce one chapter, the shortest of which is 3 verses, like that of the Quran. To undermine Islam totally, and the belief of millions of Muslims, this is the only challenge that needs to be met, rather than having to resort to insults. But despite scores of attempts over history, none has ever yielded any results, as many western critics of Islam have accepted. Professor E.H. Palmer wrote in 1820: “That the best of Arab writers has never succeeded in producing anything equal in merit to the Qur’an itself is not surprising”.

The key point here, is that whilst the west believe that offence and insults are somehow an acceptable method of challenging an alternative, a right that must be defended; whereas Islam invites to honest debate. And whilst the west may believe that their contest with any thought system routed in the believe in God was finished centuries ago, because of their defeat of the Church, the growing trend towards Islam challenges this assumption and challenges the west to meet it with an intellectual debate, before peculiar traditions of insult and offence are forwarded in the name of defending free speech.

[Article written by Akmal Ashgar]