Time and again, the Pakistani government makes it clear that blasphemous utterances are a form of terrorism, and that blasphemy should be punished as severely as terrorist acts. Resorting to acts of terrorism thus becomes the most logical and appropriate response to blasphemy and violation of religious sentiments. But that has not always been the case. What Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie calls “the violently offended Muslim”57 is a recent development, as changing governments scramble to play the Islamic card in attempts to strengthen national identity across ethnic and tribal boundaries, to mobilize voters against archenemy India, and to boost the military against potential rival forces in society. A permanent alliance of military and mosque creates a platform for Islamists and supporters of jihad. The population, which suffers under the violence of the Islamists, is too frightened to challenge them and their ideology for fear of being branded apostates or heretics.
Islamification gained momentum in Pakistan after 1979—the year the Soviets invaded Afghanistan; Iran burst into revolution; and Islamic militants seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca, controlling Islam’s holiest place for more than two weeks before being wiped out by security forces in a bloodbath whose toll reached hundreds, perhaps even thousands. But even before that year, Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto branded the minority Ahmadi Muslims as apostates and forbade them to call themselves Muslim. Later, General Zia ul-Haq made Islamic law the basis of the country’s system of justice and education. He widened the scope of blasphemy under the penal code; in 1990, the death penalty was made obligatory in cases of blasphemy.58
During British rule, not a single Muslim was convicted of blasphemy in what is today’s Pakistan. And from the founding of the Pakistani state in 1947 until Zia ul-Haq’s introduction of new blasphemy codes, fewer than 10 cases were brought to court, and the majority of those ended in acquittal. Not a single case among them was filed by a Muslim against a non-Muslim. Since the mid-1980s, the number of blasphemy cases and extrajudicial killings of alleged blasphemers has exploded. The most conservative figure is around 500 cases, whereas other sources speak of 1,000 and even 5,000 blasphemy cases. Since 1990, 58 Pakistanis who had been charged with blasphemy were murdered by citizens taking the law into their own hands. Many of those charged were Ahmadi Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Shia. Forced conversion became common. Before Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s blasphemy law protected any believer, whereas the new laws protect only Muslims.59
Blasphemy counts as one of the most heinous crimes possible in Pakistan, so when celebrated blasphemer Salman Rushdie was honored with a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth for his literary achievements in the summer of 2007, violent protests ensued. Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister Mohammad ul-Haq, son of former dictator Zia ul-Haq, commented: “If someone blows himself up, he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?”60
It was remarkable insofar as that comment made it clear that in that political culture, blasphemy—a crime without a victim—is on a par with terrorism. That was again apparent when the Danish embassy in Islamabad was the subject of a terrorist attack in 2008, killing 6 and injuring 30 people. Al Qaeda declared that the attack was in retaliation for the Muhammad cartoons, warning that there would be more unless Denmark apologized. So much was predictable. But then Pakistan’s ambassador to Denmark accepted the logic of al Qaeda when she blamed Jyllands-Posten. “It isn’t just the people of Pakistan that feel they have been harassed by what your newspaper has begun. I’d like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?” Fauzia Mufti Abbas asked a reporter from the paper following the attack.61
Those five examples show how many countries exploit the accusation of “defaming religion” in order to silence artists and critical voices. I am willing to concede that during the Cartoon Crisis, Jyllands-Posten and I may not have fully contemplated the consequences of our actions. But I do not grasp the difference between the Muhammad cartoons and the violations of which Kareem, Samodurov, Husain, Kambaksh, and Shaikh were accused. I am also dubious that the religious faithful—be they residents of Alexandria, Moscow, Mumbai, Mazar-i-Sharif, Islamabad, or Copenhagen—have a particular right not to be affronted. What would that imply for the rights of nonbelievers? In each of those cases, should we defend the right to offend or the right not to be offended?
Those questions are not intended to be rhetorical. The Muhammad cartoons reveal a number of dilemmas. Some Europeans appear to believe that we should use the distinction between majority and minority to distinguish between those who have the right to offend and those who do not. The Indian example, however, shows what that may precipitate—a majority insisting in the same way as a minority on the right not to be offended, doing so on the basis of the principle that all should be treated equally, and then exploiting that principle as a political weapon. And it raises the question of borders: If critics of the Muhammad cartoons had been consistent in their logic, they should have targeted Jyllands-Posten from the moment the cartoons were published in September 2005 until somewhere around the end of January 2006, when they were still mostly a domestic matter. From the moment the issue turned into a global crisis, however, the same critics should by their own logic have defended the new minority, that is, Jyllands-Posten and Denmark, against the offended Muslim masses around the world.
The problem with distinguishing between majority and minority is that societies all over the world have become so diverse that every minority will include individuals who in some way are in opposition to the group. If we think of the Muhammad issue as a conflict between a majority and a minority, we leave hanging those Muslims who insist on the right to practice their faith differently from the majority, just as we would continually be needing to second-guess who would be entitled to offend and who would not. Moreover, we would be sowing doubt about the necessity of wording principles concerning the rights of the individual across cultures, nations, religions, races, classes, majorities, and minorities. The idea of universal civil rights would be undermined.
As societies become increasingly multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious, if we accept the idea that people have a right not to be offended, we will end up with a tyranny of silence, for almost any speech may be deemed offensive. The alternative is to define a minimal set of constraints on freedom of speech necessary for peaceful cohabitation. For me, the line should be drawn at inciting violence, the key issue being a clear and present danger that the speech will be followed by violence.
I believe Europe would be best equipped to cope with future challenges by using something like the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which accords privileged status to freedom of speech. The more diverse a society, the greater the need for diversity of speech. We should amend articles of human rights conventions that seek to criminalize speech that incites hatred but that does not entail a clear and present danger of violence or discrimination. That kind of speech is seldom constructive, but the cost of forbidding it is high.
When I interviewed Salman Rushdie in the spring of 2009, he spoke of the existential and political significance of the right to tell one’s own story. Rushdie’s words gave me a sense of direction for this book. During the interview, I asked him to recommend three books to my readers; one of them was Kamila Shamsie’s novel Burnt Shadows. I read it in 2009 while attending a seminar in Paris on immigration and integration. In the world she portrayed, loyalties were tested; betrayal was ambiguous; identities clashed on the battlefield and in residential suburbia. In a way, the novel and the seminar shared a theme: how to cope with diversity and difference. Life presents us with choices and dilemmas. Who are we, who are they, where do we all come from, and where—separately or together—are we going? Can people of different backgrounds, history, and religion live together in peace and harmony? Can we remain true to ourselves without pushing others away? In a world where we all encounter more strangers than ever before, those are the challenges we
face.
I interviewed Kamila Shamsie in London in the autumn of 2009. We talked about her novel, and about Rushdie’s view that we all have a fundamental, existential right to tell our own story. It was a perspective in which any breach of the right of free speech became not just a political crime, but a violation of human nature. I asked Shamsie if she agreed. She replied:
One depressing thing about us humans is that we give up using our imagination. We can lose the ability both to create a narrative for our own lives and to understand others. It’s strange because we start creating stories at a very early age. Telling stories establishes intimacy. What is my story, and how much do I want to share with you? Which of my stories do I need you to listen to in order for you to understand who I am? So yes, I do agree that it’s very fundamental. It touches a profound need to create contact with our surroundings.
I asked if that meant for her that a link existed between the ability to empathize and telling stories.
“I believe there is,” she said. “Some people are only interested in telling stories about themselves. But when we start talking about human beings as storytelling creatures, it’s just as important to listen to the stories of others.”62
Her words hit home. Storytelling was what the Cartoon Crisis had been all about: the freedom and the right to tell a story as one saw fit, and the right and ability of others to listen to it. Some had neither the right nor the opportunity to tell their stories because they were subjected to persecution and oppression. Some were frightened to tell their stories because they were fearful of the reactions. Still others told their stories but suffered threats, violence, or loss of liberty. Finally, there were those who had the right and the ability to tell their stories, but who experienced difficulty imagining worlds other than their own, or who just didn’t want to listen to stories that made their perception of reality fall apart.
“Empathy” has become something of a buzzword at the beginning of the 21st century; people fling it around to show how good they are. Whenever the champions of goodness want to exclude anyone from the right company, they accuse them of lacking empathy. It’s as though they have confused the meanings of “sympathy” and “empathy.” To have sympathy for someone means having unconditional solidarity; if you disagree with a person for whom you have sympathy, you often choose to keep quiet about it. The imperative of sympathy follows the logic “either with me or against me.” That is the perspective of the grievance fundamentalist. Empathy is different. You put yourself in the position of another and see them as they are, not as they prefer to be seen. It involves both proximity and distance. Being an object of empathy can mean being confronted with unpleasant truths about ourselves.63
It is symptomatic of the age in which we live that many people are unable to distinguish between sympathy and empathy. Grievance fundamentalism illustrates why: setting ourselves up as aggrieved victims means gaining an advantage. It’s the same confusion regarding the distinction between tolerance and respect, which has been widespread ever since The Satanic Verses was published. Semantically, they have been turned on their heads and now serve the mindset of grievance fundamentalism instead of supporting and promoting individual liberty.
Empathy is founded on the notion of one common human nature, entailing rights for all humans, regardless of who and where we are. Among them are freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, the right not to be subjected to torture, and equality before the law. Only a small minority of countries actually uphold those fine principles. Denmark is one. So although many people during the Cartoon Crisis complained that Muslims were being discriminated against in Denmark, the truth is that Muslim citizens are more empowered there than in any Muslim country.
If we accept demands to safeguard particular cultures and religions against criticism, we come close to rejecting the idea of a universal human nature and universal civil rights. We tend toward the claim that humans are unable to understand one another across cultural divides: that belief is the basis of calls for special rights and differential rights, for example, for women or nonbelievers.
I was born and brought up in Denmark, a small liberal democracy that is one of the most stable and tolerant societies in the world, in which citizens enjoy greater freedoms and greater equality than almost anywhere else. That equality is widely apparent, not only in areas such as gender politics or access to education and medical aid but also with regard to freedom of religious exercise, the right to say no to religion, and the liberty to put whatever we think or feel into words, images, or sounds. Looking around the world, I can see that I belong to an extremely privileged group.
Nevertheless, it took people from other parts of the world, where liberty cannot be taken for granted, to teach me to appreciate freedom of speech.
The Soviet human rights movement taught me more about the foundations of freedom and its preconditions than my life and upbringing in one the freest countries in the world. It was a profound discovery that has marked my life. I am grateful to have experienced a totalitarian dictatorship: I was able to see how it intimidated its citizens and to observe individuals insisting on their right to live in freedom and dignity. They refused to submit to the tyranny of silence. And the story had a happy ending: the Soviet state disappeared.
Kamila Shamsie’s words about exchanging narratives also affected me in a more personal way. She made me think about my own life and the importance of telling stories and listening to the stories of those closest to me.
The Cartoon Crisis gave me the chance to travel around the world to discuss why the individual’s right to tell a story is so important, even if that story should offend and cause sorrow. It helped me reflect on how elements of my own life—people I had met, events I had experienced—shaped my viewpoints on freedom of speech and its perimeters. The process convinced me that no one should have the right to dictate to others what stories they should tell and in what way. That was Salman Rushdie’s point. The moment we begin to restrict people’s right to tell their story—the moment we begin to monitor and control speech, either to spare the reader discomfort or to safeguard the state—then freedom no longer prevails and from then on, the only question is how much unfreedom we will accept.
If we allow the distinction between words and action to crumble, and we forbid words, not because they incite crime but because they may cause affront, then we have limited our own right to tell a story by giving the listener a say in what stories we may tell and how they may be told. Danger lies that way. For when words run out, violence begins. If we forbid offensive speech, individuals will resort to direct action.
Notes
Chapter 1. From Where I Stand
1 Habib Toumi, “Doha Media Freedom Center Head Quits,” Gulfnews (Dubai), June 24, 2009.
2 In the fall of 2011, I was granted a visa to Russia; since then, I have had no problems entering the country.
3 John Hansen and Kim Hundevadt, Provoen og profeten:Muhammedkrisen bag kulisserne (Copenhagen: Jyllands-Postens Forlag, 2006); Jytte Klausen, The Cartoons That Shook the World (London: Yale University Press, 2009).
4 Per Stig Møller, “Europas rolle i forhold til omverdenen,” in Europas værdier og rolle i verden, Charlotte Antonsen and Ole Buchardt Olesen, eds. (Copenhagen: Peter la Cour, 2007), pp. 11–19; Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld, In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions without Becoming a Fanatic (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).
5 Interview with Salman Rushdie, May 15, 2009, Copenhagen.
6 On the question of culture and political order and change, see Lawrence Harrison, The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Francis Fukuyama, Trust: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995); and Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington, Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2005).
7 Richard Bernstein, “German Cartoon of Suicide Bombers Angers Iran,” New Y
ork Times, February 17, 2006. The cartoon was published February 10, 2006.
Chapter 2. Mass Murder and Satire
1 Maria Gomez is a pseudonym; she wishes to remain anonymous.
2 Lawrence Wright, “The Terror Web,” New Yorker, August 2, 2004. The account of how the terror strike unfolded is based on Wright’s article.
3 “Spain Remembers Victims of Madrid,” The Guardian (London), March 11, 2005.
4 Fernando Reinares, “Al-Qaeda Is Back,” National Interest, August 1, 2010, http://nationalinterest.org/article/al-qaeda-is-back-3348; “The Madrid Bombings and Global Jihadism,” Survival 52, no. 2 (April–May 2010); “Spain Remembers,” The Guardian (London).
5 Victoria Burnett, “7 Are Acquitted in Madrid Bombings,” New York Times, November 1, 2007; Paul Hamilos and Mark Tran, “21 Guilty, 7 Cleared over Madrid Train Bombings,” Guardian, October 31, 2007.
Chapter 3. From Moscow to Muhammad
1 I spoke with Sergei Kovalev on a number of occasions when I was living in Moscow. The conversation cited took place in the autumn of 2002. The human rights movement had a keen eye for the dangers presented by group rights at the cost of the individual and his or her rights. My friend Kronid Lyubarsky, about whom I write in detail in a later chapter, pointed out in a talk he gave in 1992 that, following the coup in 1917, the Bolsheviks introduced a legal novelty: “Rights were not guaranteed for the individual, but for a certain group, however big. The Declaration of Rights proclaimed after the October Revolution was entitled: ‘Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People.’ . . . Anyone not belonging to the working class and the exploited people was automatically deprived of his or her rights.” See Kronid Lyubarsky, “The Development of the Concept of Human Rights: History and Perspectives,” in Kronid—Izbrannye stati K. Lyubarsky (Moscow: Rossiyskiy Gosudarstvenny Universitet, 2001), pp. 263–64.
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