The West could not have been more unprepared for this new call for censorship on behalf of Islam. Whereas in 1989, Western politicians and intellectuals instinctively sided with Rushdie, by 2007, the announcement that the Queen of England would confer a knighthood on him was met with controversy. Several British Labour and Conservative parliamentarians, journalists, and others publicly denounced the decision. Berman notes this shift: “How times have changed! The Rushdies of today find themselves under criticism, compared unfavorably in the press with the Islamist philosopher who writes prefaces for the collected fatwas of Sheik al-Qaradawi, the theologian of the human bomb.… During the Rushdie affair, courage was saluted. Today it is likened to fascism.”30 Fear is now shaping how we discuss Islam, or whether, apart from platitudes, we dare say anything at all. It has also affected how we view others who, by their expressed ideas, arouse the ire of OIC governments and Islamist extremists. In 2006, Borders and Waldenbooks stores refused, on security grounds, to stock the Council for Secular Humanism’s Free Inquiry magazine because it reprinted some of the Danish cartoons. Officials at Utrecht University, citing fear of violence from Muslim students, demanded that retiring Professor Pieter W. Van Der Horst omit a passage concerning Islamic anti-Semitism from his valedictory address, even though there had been no threats by Muslim students or anyone else.31 There have been some notable exceptions to this pattern: for example, in September 2010, the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium, in a ceremony keynoted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and attended by editors and publishers from Europe’s top media companies, awarded its prestigious media prize to Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard for his “unbending engagement for freedom of the press and freedom of opinion” and for his courage to defend these democratic values despite threats of death and violence.32 For the most part, however, in the West’s most prominent institutions and associations, there is a growing reluctance to criticize even some of the most extreme manifestations of things done in the name of Islam.
The common Western response of restricting expression about Islam coincides with arguments that such restrictions are necessary to create a social climate that protects minorities from possible discriminatory practices and violence and that religious freedom includes a right to be protected from ridicule, criticism, or dissent; or it springs from an exaggerated sense of multiculturalism. While these rationales are given frequently by policy makers and diplomats, it is actually fear of violence that is the explanation commonly given in the specific incidents. Explicitly citing fear of violence, the British private watchdog group, Index on Censorship, in 2009 declined to show any Danish cartoons when running an interview with author Jytte Klausen on Yale’s decision not to publish the cartoons in her book. British political satirist Rory Bremner commented: “When [I’m] writing a sketch about Islam, I’m writing a line and I think, ‘If this goes down badly, I’m writing my own death warrant there.’ … Where does satire go from there, because we like to be brave but not foolish.”33
Christopher Hitchens correctly discerns: “a hidden partner in our cultural and academic and publishing and broadcasting world: a shadowy figure that has, uninvited, drawn up a chair to the table. He never speaks. He doesn’t have to. But he is very well understood. The late playwright Simon Gray was alluding to him when he said that Nicholas Hytner, the head of London’s National Theatre, might put on a play mocking Christianity but never one that questioned Islam.”34 A letter to the Boston Globe neatly skewered that paper’s claim that it was sensitivity to offense that led to its decision not to publish any Danish cartoons in its coverage of them: “I find all of your editorial cartoons deeply offensive, morally, religiously, philosophically, and spiritually. In fact, I don’t like your editorials, either. And the editorializing in your news coverage is annoying as well. In keeping with your cowardly policy not to offend anyone, kindly cease publication at once.”35 The Bart Simpson television cartoon put it more simply. Referring to a death threat causing the creators of the irreverent animation series South Park to censor its depiction of Muhammad, the kid Bart, on the Simpsons’ website, is seen writing on a blackboard, “South Park—We’d Stand Beside You If We Weren’t So Scared.”36
This fear is not a psychological neurosis or “phobia,” but an empirically and rationally grounded, and well-warranted, apprehension about being murdered if one expresses something negative, or something understood as negative, about Islam.
The full extent of Western self-censorship regarding Islam is unknowable, but it is deep, and touches prominent outlets.37 Yale University Press, Random House, Borders, Waldenbooks, Comedy Central, and even the Index on Censorship have explicitly cited fear of violence as a reason to drop materials that they feared could be seen as impugning Islam. Nelson Carey, President of the American Association of University Professors, said of Yale University Press’s decision to censor a book on the Danish cartoons: “We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands.”38
Undercutting Muslims
Some Islamic scholars, including those contributing to this book, advocate religious freedom on the basis of Islam itself and reject temporal punishments for apostasy and blasphemy. Abdullah Saeed notes that there is a debate within Islam on whether the Qur’an supports temporal punishment for apostasy and blasphemy. He agrees with Wahid’s assessment that such punishment reflects “the early days of Islam, when apostasy generally coincided with desertion from the caliph’s army and/or rejection of his authority, and thus constituted treason or rebellion.” Saeed argues: “The Prophet’s task was primarily to explain the difference between right and wrong. Individuals then had the choice of whether or not to follow God’s path. This principle applies equally to Muslims who choose to leave Islam.… [T]he individual … will ultimately bear the responsibility for that choice in the afterlife.” Just as the institution of slavery, which had garnered Muslim and other consensus in the past, has been dropped, punishments for blasphemy and apostasy can also be revised.39
But Muslim scholars like these are among those most likely to be persecuted by repressive forces. As we’ve seen, many moderate Muslim voices are being silenced, especially by apostasy and blasphemy rules, which are key to preserving the tyranny of reactionary forms of Islam. Zeyno Baran explains: “The most important ideological struggle in the world today is within Islam. Moderate and secular Muslims, who embrace the compatibility of Islam and democracy and the individual freedoms we all cherish in the West, are being confronted by Islamists, who are extremist activists that hijack Islam and seek to gain political power and reshape societies.”40 In recent years, political campaigners who call for transparent elections in Iran, democracy activists who demand a constitution in Saudi Arabia, and editors who press to end the criminalization of blasphemy in Afghanistan have all been imprisoned for apostasy or blasphemy. Some, like Pakistan’s minister Bhatti and governor Taseer, both strong advocates of blasphemy law reform, have been murdered.
In fact, Muslims at large have much to fear from Islamist extremist violence. Between 2006 and 2008, 98 percent of Al-Qaeda victims were Muslim, and Zawahiri, now Al-Qaeda’s commander in chief, has discounted any Muslim concern about this on the basis that, while perhaps some victims were martyrs, most were not real Muslims at all but “apostates.”41 This “takfir” doctrine of declaring dissenting Muslims apostates in order to justify killing them also targets Muslims in the West who advocate open interpretations of Islam.42 Some of the Muslim women’s rights activists described in chapter 13, who have been threatened with “ritual slaughter” and other forms of murder, include Seyran Ates, a German lawyer, Mimount Bousakla, a Belgian senator, and Nyamko Sabuni, a Swedish minister of integration and gender.
Part of the answer to a common post-9/11 refrain—“Where are the moderates?”—is found in the Islamist practice of hurling charges of blasphemy, apostasy, and related accusations that make criticism of all actions and ideas in the name of Islam out of bounds and punishable offenses in this world. And, as Ir
shad Manji pointedly asks: “In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?”43
Apart from the threat of violent attack, such Muslims are undermined by Western blasphemy and hate-speech prosecutions and pressure to self-censor. The Muslim Canadian Congress warned that the Canadian Islamic Congress’s complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine would “serve no purpose other than to reinforce the stereotype that Muslims have little empathy for vigorous debate and democracy.” It warned that a Canadian human rights commission’s “editorializing” against Steyn and the magazine sent a “very dangerous message to moderate Muslims who reject Sharia and do not take inspiration from overseas Islamic countries or groups.” In effect, according to the MCC, the commission had “taken sides in the bitter struggle within Canada’s Muslim community where sharia-supporting Islamists are pitted against liberal and secular Muslims.” Zeyno Baran, of Turkish Muslim background, comments: “By tolerating intolerance, many in the West make it harder for moderate and reformist Muslims to succeed.”44
The West undercuts many—especially pro-freedom—forms of Islam by often failing to protect its citizens from radicals, by marginalizing moderates on the basis of radicals’ arguments that they are not real Muslims, and by adopting laws restricting speech in compliance with the demand of such radicals. George Weigel observes: “[T]he development of an Islamic ‘social doctrine’ capable of sustaining tolerance, civility, and pluralism engages the most serious questions of Islamic self-understanding and reminds us that great social and political questions are, more than not, ultimately theological in character.”45 Within Islam, non-Muslims clearly cannot fill this role, but Islamic authorities can, and, where there is individual freedom of religion and expression, many of them do. They need support, not marginalization, in overcoming the reactionary forces who seek to deny them religious and political space and silence their message.
The West at a Crossroads
Although the West remains much freer than the Muslim world, it is experiencing problems stemming from blasphemy restrictions similar to those occurring in the latter—the targeting of a wide range of views, vague and variable laws that are selectively enforced, vigilantism, intimidation and harassment of political opponents, the repression and marginalization of Muslim reformers, and the silencing of political and religious debate. Western actions and reactions concerning insults to religion have generally been uninformed, unfocused, halting, and contradictory, revealing a drift from core principles of freedom in order to silence criticism and dissent in Islamic matters. The UN Arab Development Report noted that cutting off debate that challenges prevailing Islamic strictures has been “inimical to human development.” This is because Islam is a complex belief system shaping the views and practices of many of its over one billion followers in culture, politics, economics, science, education, personal and family relations, law and society, as well as what is often called religion. As our survey of Muslim countries demonstrates, under Islamic blasphemy regimes, a large body of ideas is no longer open for debate and inquiry. As Wahid has observed, coercively applied blasphemy laws “narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse … not only about religion, but about vast spheres of life, literature, science and culture in general.”
The stakes are high. Most immediately, fundamental freedoms of religion and expression are being eroded. Because of definitional problems, the rule of law and due process rights are also at risk. As the essays of Wahid, Abu-Zayd, and Saeed reveal, accusations of religious insult shape the ideological battle within Islam, between those open to religious and cultural pluralism and those promoting theocratic regimes. This also concerns Western national security interests, since the defeat of extremist interpretations of Islam is tied to whether there is political space for debate, criticism, and interpretation within Islam.
Four major themes have emerged from our survey of the West’s legal response to the new demand to enforce respect for Islam.
First, Western hate-speech and public order laws serve as proxies for Muslim blasphemy rules. While blasphemy laws to protect Christianity have been abolished or become all but obsolete, most Western states, with the exception of the United States, respond to complaints of offense concerning Islam with hate-speech laws. Such laws purportedly protect people rather than religions, but, as Council of Europe experts readily acknowledge, the two offenses are “easily blurred.” In fact, from Rushdie’s novel to the Danish cartoons, it is the perceived defamation of Islam itself, not of persons, which has caused most offense among Muslims and for which many seek state intervention.
Second, religious hate-speech laws are vaguely defined, allowing selective application, which violates the individual’s right to freedoms of expression and religion and other basic rights. They often require exceedingly narrow, if not untenable, distinctions between protected social commentary and illegal “gratuitous” insults.46 The Venice Commission notes that this distinction depends on content-based judgments regarding the statement’s worthiness in “furthering progress in human affairs,” on whether it is religious or political in substance, on its audience and range of distribution, on whether the speaker is fulfilling a public role, and even on whether the complainant and his religious group “have reacted violently to criticism of their religion.”47 This invites arbitrary enforcement, and governments in Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Austria have not been above selectively prosecuting successful candidates from the political opposition who support immigration restrictions. Furthermore, secular courts find themselves making theological judgments about Qur’anic verses and Islamic practices, for which they are not qualified.
Third, as we have seen, Western courts, including the European Court of Human Rights, sometimes convict and punish those found guilty essentially of sacrilege against Islam. But even those prosecutions that fail, which is probably most of them, have a broad chilling effect. The time and expense of fighting a case on its merits prompts many accused to settle quickly out of court. Ezra Levant, an editor who successfully defended himself against anti-Islamic hate-speech charges in Canada, wrote of the expense and ordeal of being tried: “The process is the punishment.”48 Few authors and fewer outlets are willing to publish negative speech about Islam if there is a potential of prosecution.
Fourth, while some maintain that religious speech controls are made necessary to foster harmony in culturally diverse societies, hate-speech prosecutions have not been proven to reduce hate and instead can exacerbate social tensions. Brian Grim and Roger Finke’s surveys indicate that religious restrictions, including those on speech, contribute to internal instability and greater violence.49 Reviewing the history of European laws against anti-Semitic speech, Elizabeth Powers concludes: “[T]he sad fact is that, despite criminalization of Holocaust denial, Jews in Europe are less secure than at any time since World War II—unlike in the United States, where even Nazis can march down city streets.”50 Clearly factors other than mere expression account for this regional difference.
Rather than alleviate the strains on a religiously pluralistic society, hate-speech laws exacerbate them by stimulating, as in Italy and Australia, a rush by different religious groups to sue and countersue or claim partiality. Some Muslims point to discriminatory pro-Christian blasphemy bans or laws forbidding Holocaust denial. Some Jews and Christians say that, due to fears of reaction and violence, Muslims are, in practice, given greater protection. Such laws also raise Muslim expectations that are then frustrated by the West’s general unwillingness to punish defamation of a religion as such. When Britain adopted its hate-speech law, the public prosecutor, anticipating disappointment by British Muslims, felt compelled to explain to them that the law would not “protect them from people being rude or offensive about Islam.” Furthermore, as in the Danish cartoons crisis, feelings of offense can be easily manufactured or exacerbated for political ends.
Western efforts to curb negative commentary or defamation of Islam erode
liberal democratic tradition, chill speech on a wide array of issues that intersect with Islam, and endanger security, while never being able to satisfy the demands of OIC governments and Islamists.51
Recommendations
Western countries need to comprehend and counter the threats posed by demands to stifle negative commentary about and within Islam. This challenge is complicated by policy makers’ common lack of knowledge and discomfort in dealing with religious issues generally.
The first recommendation is that diplomats and others take religions seriously enough to learn about them. Former U.S. diplomat and director of the State Department’s office of religious freedom, Thomas Farr, writes that “U.S. policy makers and diplomats remain largely ignorant or confused about the effects of religious doctrines, communities, actors, and political theologies” and that “the religion-avoidance syndrome that continues to dominate U.S. policy” has hampered its ability to effectively respond to Islamic extremism.
Second, policy makers must realize that there is a battle within Islam and must discern who are the extremists and their supporters and apologists and who are not. As U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said: “[E]ventual success in the conflict against jihadist extremism will depend less on the results of individual military engagements and more on the overall ideological climate within the world of Islam. Understanding how this climate is likely to evolve over time, and what factors—including U.S. actions—will affect it thus becomes one of the most significant intellectual challenges we face.”52
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