Peter McGee had planned to feature three annotated segments of Mein Kampf in Zeitungszeugen, a magazine that features facsimiles of Nazi-era newspapers, before a court in Bavaria  whose government has held the copyright since the end of World War II — ruled that this would be a violation of the law.

“It is good that the publisher is now legally forbidden from spreading this diatribe,” said Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soder in response to the decision.

But is it? And who exactly is this continuing ban supposed to protect? Some Jewish leaders in Germany are in favour of publishing a new edition of the book, albeit one heavily annotated by respected historians.

Although publishing Nazi literature for non-educational purposes remains against German law, the copyright for Mein Kampf runs out in 2015, 70 years after Hitler’s death. This is therefore an issue Germany is going to be forced to confront imminently.

One could argue that the ban, which may have had some logic decades ago when Germany was still emerging from the dark years of National Socialism, now only serves to increase the peculiar interest in this book.

It is certainly hard to see what remains to be achieved through this ongoing squeamishness in republishing the Nazi bible. Millions of copies in German and translations into multiple languages are commonplace. E-bay alone has over 100 copies currently on offer, including many of Nazi-era vintage complete with embossed golden swastikas, some for as little than 20 dollars. A quick internet search leads you to a digital version of the book.

Not to mention the fact that it is famously long and turgid and that few people, even amongst the ranks of committed neo-Nazis, can have actually read all the way through Hitler’s 720-page tome.

And awareness of the author’s legacy is hardly lacking in Germany, where this week, in addition to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the country marked 70 years since the Wansee conference, when Nazi officials planned the extermination of the Jews of Europe.

In addition, this was the week when a government-appointed expert study reported back on the results of an extensive academic study on current levels of anti-Semitism in Germany. The results were not encouraging; one in five people, it revealed, still held anti-Semitic views, with the internet playing a particular role in fostering this phenomenon. The study found that the term “Jew” is commonly used as a pejorative, even by schoolchildren. “There is no comprehensive strategy for fighting anti-Semitism in Germany,” said one of the report’s authors, Dr Juliane Wetzel.

The Germans can comfort themselves with the fact that, according to this study, they are far from the most prejudiced nation in Europe. Portugal, Hungary and Poland are all worse, apparently. And of course anti-Jewish sentiment should be seen in the context of wider xenophobia and racism; prejudice against immigrants and Muslims is a problem across Europe.

But if nearly 70 years of Holocaust education and the banning of Nazi literature have failed to address these views, then continuing to block the publication of Mein Kampf is not going to have much of an effect. Not only is it unenforceable – but it’s a measure whose symbolism has lost all impact.

Daniella Peled is an editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and a former foreign editor of the Jewish Chronicle. She writes widely on Israel and Palestine and is a regular contributor to Ha’aretz

The article, entitled “Is Tantawi reading the public pulse correctly?”, said that Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who leads Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), could share the same fate as former president Hosni Mubarak and find himself in jail as a result of popular discontent with his management of the revolution’s transition process.

“Many in the military resent the reputation of their institution being abused by the Field Marshal and his 19 colleagues on the SCAF … the present rumblings of discontent among junior officers, Chief of Staff General Sami Anan’s greater popularity than the Field Marshal in the military and among Egyptians as a whole, and intensified pressure from the US could all result in the Field Marshal sharing President Mubarak’s fate,” Dr Springborg wrote in the
original version of the article.

Dr Springborg concluded by saying that “discontented officers not in the SCAF might decide that a coup within the coup would be the best way to save the honour of the country and their institution.”

This open critique of the military and implications of rumblings within army ranks crossed a major red line in Egypt’s press freedom: criticism of the military.

After the opinion piece was censored and toned down, the distribution of 20,000 copies of Egypt Independent’s second issue, due to come out on 1 December, was still prevented.

Egypt Independent was the new name adopted for Al-Masry Al-Youm’s English language edition, which has existed online for two years. Its management is affiliated with the privately-owned Arabic language daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, a widely read and popular newspaper in Egypt.

The printed version has been put on hold for now. But, the life of its daily online version, Al- Masry Al-Youm English, continues.

Press freedom under SCAF

The whole experience has brought to the fore the fact that overt criticism of the military remains a red line with serious consequences that few are willing to cross.

Magdi El-Galad presumably has close ties with the military as he was recently offered, though turned down, the position of information minister in the cabinet of SCAF-appointed Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri.

An old-fashioned mentality also remains about the power of the printed press versus its online counterpart. Some think that had Dr. Springborg’s piece been published online, it may not have been censored.

This is ironic given the fact that the internet, especially Facebook and Twitter, played important roles in initiating the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt last winter, and continue to be essential information-sharing tools.

But it was a newspaper article published in the Arabic-language daily, Al-Shorouk, written by activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah that landed him in jail in October.

He wrote about the death of activist Mina Daniel during the army’s attack on peaceful Coptic protestors at Maspero, an area of Cairo known for housing the state television building. This left at least 29 people dead.

Alaa remains in a military jail, alongside blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad, whose critical writings of the military also led to his imprisonment. He has been on a hunger strike for over 100 days.

Dina Abdel Rahman, a television presenter on the privately-owned Dream TV, was also fired in July for reporting on a newspaper article, which was critical of the SCAF.

Dina’s incident, as well as that of Egypt Independent, raise fears among journalists, and those concerned with freedom of the press that while under Mubarak it was mainly the state that intervened to curb criticism in the press, now the owners of private media, supposedly the freest in Egypt, and editors themselves are practicing self-censorship at the behest of the military.

But “self-censorship has always existed”, Naila Hamdy, assistant professor at the American University in Cairo’s department of journalism, told Index. “There were a couple of months of real freedom after 25 January, and although some may have reverted back to self-censorship, journalists are still bolder than they were before the revolution.”

She added: “Media professionals might hold back, because they decide it is better than getting shut down completely. It might be better to push the envelope slightly, than with no publication at all.”

And, how far the envelope can continue to be pushed depends on the success of the transition process from military to civilian rule, a process underway as Egypt conducts parliamentary elections.

In connection with the police investigation into phone hacking, News International has been conducting a trawl of News of the World data records. Recently, this trawl turned up a number of emails that appeared to suggest that some senior journalists on the News of the World may have been involved in making corrupt payments to police officers.

Hickman Rose, a leading criminal law firm, engaged meto examine these emails and to provide advice to the News Corporation Board on their content. I advised them, inter alia, that the emails appeared to be evidence of serious crime and that they, and any other supporting material coming to light must be handed over to Scotland Yard. The News Corp Board immediately accepted this advice and the emails and other material were passed over to police last month. As a result of this disclosure of information, police have been able to commence an investigation into the question of payments to police by News of the World journalists.

My role has been confined to advising on this single issue. I have not seen any material relating to the phone hacking investigation nor provided any advice in relation toit.

Jonathan Dimbleby, Chair of Index on Censorship, comments:

I am pleased to confirm that, in the circumstances described by Lord Macdonald, Index on Censorship sees no conflict of interest with his role as a trustee. It is an important aspect of our approach to the protection of free speech that any trustee who is also a lawyer should be free to represent any client in the absence of such conflict.

Activists are accused of belonging to a secret network, but the court has failed to prove its existence or even its name, says Saeed al-Shehabi, exiled in the UK and sentenced in absentia

Freedom of expression has been dealt heavy blows in recent months by the government of Bahrain. A military court in Manama has this week issued heavy sentences against several people for openly expressing political views.

Eight were sentenced to life imprisonment, all of whom have been punished for their views and are considered “Prisoners of Conscience”. Although they were accused of belonging to a secret network, the court has failed to prove its existence or even its name.

Among those is Dr Abdul Jalil Al Singace, a blogger and an open critic of the regime. He was first arrested on 8 August 2010 upon his return from UK after he criticised the government at a House of Lords seminar three days earlier.

He was severely tortured in his six months incarceration, blindfolded, deprived of his glasses and crutches (he is severely disabled as a result of polio since his birth), hanged from hands and knees, subjected to electric shocks with what appears to be Taser machine and deprivation of sleep. His two sons were also arrested as means of pressure.

Dr Saeed Shehabi, a UK citizen, who has also received a life sentence in absentia is a journalist with a weekly column at Al Quds Al Arabi (and Arabic daily published in London) and a former editor of the Arabic weekly (Al Aalam).

Ali Abdul Emam, the most known blogger in Bahrain, received a 15 years sentence after being tried in absentia. He is the founder of Bahrainonline.org, the largest and most popular website in Bahrain. He had been arrested last summer together with more than 500 Bahrainis in a government crackdown against the opposition.

Two weeks ago, Ayat Al Qurmuzi, a 20 year old poet was jailed for one year for reciting a poem in February at Pearl Square.

The attack on freedom of expression has claimed many other victims. Among them is Dr Mansoor Al Jamri, the editor of the semi-independent daily newspaper, Al Wasat, who is on trial with other staff members for publishing news unfavourable to the government.

While most of the victims have been Shia Muslims, at least one Sunni Bahraini has been punished for expressing his views; Mohammad Bu Flasa disappeared on 17 February shortly after addressing the crowds at Pearl Square. He is still languishing in jail.

Image: The Sniper on Flickr.

Booker prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson gave the keynote address at last night’s Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards, sponsored by SAGE

The last time I attended this event it was a sit-down dinner. When I was invited to give this address I assumed — I think reasonably – that it would be . . . a sit-down dinner. This isn’t a complaint. . .  I’m not saying you’ve got me here under false pretences, but I am starting to wonder whether I am the reason this is not a sit-down dinner. Either someone saw me eat the last time I was here, and doesn’t want to see me eat again.  Or it was thought I’d make dietary stipulations it would be beyond your ingenuity or finances to honour.

These days, every time I’m asked to make an after-dinner speech — which this isn’t, because there is no dinner — I am also asked where I stand in the matter of pig.  In fact, the Book of Leviticus comes down as hard against lapwing, chameleon and tortoise as  it does against pig, yet no one ever checks to see where I stand on chameleon. Only ever pig.  Do people hear my name and automatically conjure up pig?  Anybody would think I’m a banker. . .  Though if any of you are thinking of calling me a banker, be warned that I’ll be taking out a super-injunction.

I like this idea of getting the law to stop people calling you what you are.  “Call me a comic novelist again and I’ll see you in court!”  Does it then follow that we can get the courts to call us what we aren’t?  I’ve always fancied being described as a great Christian thinker and humanitarian — a great, tall, Christian thinker and humanitarian, wise beyond my years, beautiful beyond the power of words to describe, and wonderfully lacking in neurosis when it comes to what I eat.  Can I sue whoever refers to me in any other terms?

Can I sue anyone who refers to me at all?  Can I take out an injunction against any person who claims to know me, to see me, to have seen me, or to be aware of my existence?  Can I take out an injunction against the promulgation of the idea that I exist?

I feel a novel coming on: the story of a man who goes to law to prevent anyone putting him into words. Words — ladies and gentlemen. It’s not just writers who are the enemy now —  it’s language itself.

We should be flattered, we who deal in language.  Clearly, we wield greater power than we know. Our criticism stings, our derision maddens.  Our sacred calling, to hold nothing sacred, is under threat — it is always under threat – but every time a court attempts to gag us,  or come to that the court of easily swayed public opinion attempts to gag us: someone’s hurt feelings, someone’s outraged sensibility, someone who is offended, as though the fact of being offended somehow confers the right not to be — every time the state steps in to have us silenced, as in the case of some of those we honour tonight, in comparison to whom most of us live the life of Reilly — every time someone would have us silenced, the power we possess is acknowledged.

For our part — we who possess that power – we must not exempt ourselves from the universality of our scorn.  If nothing’s sacred, then we aren’t sacred either. Nor, by the same logic, is any principle. “Objection, evasion, cheerful mistrust, delight in mockery,” Nietzsche said, “are signs of health.”  “Everything unconditional,’ he went on, “belongs to pathology.”  So we are trapped in a contradiction of our profession’s making.  Mockery — sacred; unconditional attachment to mockery — pathological.

Leonard Cohen’s great song in praise of imperfection says something similar:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN.

A crack in every ideal; a crack in every belief system; a crack in everything we hold too dear.

It is essential, I believe, that we don’t debase the currency. Not every whistle blower blows for the greater good.  Not every secret is malign. We have no inalienable right to know that a footballer is having an affair – unless he keeps missing penalties, or unless the affair he’s having is with our wife, and even then there’s an argument for our not being told.  “In human relations,” Graham Greene once wrote, “kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.”   The public sphere, however, is different; the public sphere requires that we be less considerate.  Though even then, we are so much more deadly when we pick our target and take careful aim.

And it matters that we are deadly —  not only when it comes to state deceit around the world, but when it comes to our own domestic tyrannies — the tyranny of like-mindedness, sanctimony, unyielding conviction of rectitude, and the daisy-chains of villainy that go with political alignment.  It should not be in the name of party or agenda that we speak out; just scepticism. Nothing is wholly true, nothing is wholly right.  And whoever is offended when we say that . . . deserves to be.

If this were a sit-down dinner — which it isn’t — I would raise a glass to that — “To scepticism!” And just in case you’re worried about it for next time — yes, I do eat pig.  Pig’s brain, oyster and chameleon bagel – there’s nothing like it.

On with the evening.  You do wonderful work.  You let the light in.

For many journalists and opinion leaders who supported the Ergenekon investigations from the beginning, Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener’s arrests are absurd and plainly wrong, says

It would supposedly uncover the misdeeds of Turkish state officials who were part of an alleged ultra-nationalist plot that planned to overthrow the ruling AKP government and introduce martial law.

Last week’s arrests of Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener, two highly respected journalists, threw doubts on the validity of the case.

For more than a decade Şık and Şener, both self-proclaimed human rights reporters, have reported on the Turkish state’s human rights violations.

The majority of the violations they have documented since 2000 were committed by military forces, whose high-ranking members are still waiting trial in the Ergenekon case.

For many journalists and opinion leaders who supported the Ergenekon investigations from the beginning, Şık and Şener’s arrests are absurd and plainly wrong. It would be like Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward being imprisoned for taking part in the Watergate scandal.

Ahmet Şık was a reporter for the political journal Nokta in 2007, when it published a cover story entitled ‘Darbe Günlükleri’ (Coup Diaries) that led to the opening of the Ergenekon investigation itself. Nokta published extracts from diaries, which it claimed were written by the retired vice-admiral Özden Örnek.

The extracts detailed meetings which were said to have taken place between high-profile military chiefs, allegedly plotting a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government using illegal means, while collaborating with certain nationalist members of the Turkish media in disinformation campaigns against hand-picked, high-profile figures. Örnek has denied the allegations and says that he has never kept a diary.

The Ergenekon organisation were said to have planned to assassinate the novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, as well as prominent Kurdish politicians Ahmet Türk and Osman Baydemir. Ahmet Şık assiduously reported on the story.

Nedim Şener won the 2010 Oxfam/Novib PEN Freedom of Expression award. His most recent book Red Friday – Who Broke Dink’s Pen was published last month and is a brilliant exposé claiming that Turkish security forces were  aware of a plot to assassinate Hrant Dink, the Turkish Armenian editor of Agos newspaper who was murdered in 2007.

Şener’s book created tension among the security community as the trauma surrounding Dink’s murder is still very much alive in Turkey and no institution wants to bear the blame alone.

Many Turks believe that those who were arrested in the Dink case are merely the hit-men who pulled the trigger or aided the actual crime, while the real perpetrators responsible for planning the assassination are still free.

After Dink’s murder, people were shocked to see images of Turkish police and gendarmes alongside his assassin, who smiled ecstatically into the camera phones of the officers.

After these horrors, the Turkish public demanded justice but what it received in return looks nothing like it.

In his column for Taraf newspaper last week, Turkish academic Murat Belge, who was also allegedly targeted by the Ergenekon generals, wrote: “If Ahmet Şık can be arrested, then I, too, may very well be.”

Ahmet İnsel, another leftist academic-cum-journalist, warned that “the Ergenekon case is turning into Susurluk”, implying that the attempt to expose the crimes of the security forces is itself turning into a plot that hinders justice, creating an impression of a country where unfair legal acts are committed.

In the late 1990s, Turkish journalists who revealed the existence of proto-fascist groups in the state apparatus that terrorised Kurds and leftists in the country, faced similar problems regarding freedom of expression while their reports and investigations helped unveil the Susurluk gang, a mixture of former MPs, police chiefs and army personnel.

While the arrests of Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener, who were among ten journalists and writers taken into custody last Thursday, provoked widespread protests and various sit-ins in İstanbul, there were also some journalists who seemed to disagree with the outrage.

They asked the public to wait for the evidence to be produced by the prosecutor, Zekeriya Öz, who may eventually connect findings from previous arrests, implicating these journalists as accomplices of the Ergenekon organisation.

A friend and colleague of many years, Ertuğrul Mavioğlu of Radikal newspaper, begs to differ.  He describes Ahmet Şık as a hard working reporter and an unyielding leftist, definitely having nothing to do with the Ergenekon crew whose ideology is extremely militant in tone.

Nedim Şener, who was chosen as 56th World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute (IPI) for his book The Dink Murder and Intelligence Lies, is an even more moderate figure who shares an inquisitive journalist’s perspective with Şık, asking unsettling questions about Turkey’s police organisation that may eventually help reveal its defects.

They both have reservations about Fethullah Gülen, the Pennsylvania-based Muslim scholar whose community (known as cemaat) is widely agreed to be an unprecedented force in contemporary Turkish politics and daily life.

While numerous secularists see Gülen as an extremely powerful figure, whose organisation is ultimately harmful for democracy, many pious Muslims and moderates see him as a peaceful voice whose blend of democracy and Islam is vital for a regeneration of Turkish democracy.

Şık’s forthcoming book, due to be published next month, is reportedly a critique of Gülen and many fear that this was the actual cause of his arrest.

It is claimed the police department has sympathy for the Gülen community, while the Turkish media has reported that his book was the chief reason behind the raid.

On Sunday, however, prosecutor Öz denied the allegations that Şık and Şener were arrested either for their books or their ideas. In an unusual statement published by a state prosecutor, Öz defended the arrests which he said were related to hard evidence “that cannot be revealed at this stage of the case”.

Socialist, nationalist, liberal and Islamist journalists walked together through İstanbul’s crowded İstiklal Street during protests last week.

There were more than 3,000 protesters who attended the march, many of whom are known to be deeply suspicious of each other’s ideas, uneasy about walking alongside their ideological polar opposites.

Some of the protesters expressed their concerns at a crackdown on secularism and republican values while others feared a right-wing wave of raids against socialists.

Many democrats who have supported the government over the last decade now fear a loss of credibility for the Ergenekon case that started with the findings of journalists.

Two of those journalists are now in Silivri Penitentiaries Campus, alongside retired generals and military personnel, waiting for their trial, date unknown.

Kaya Genç is a novelist and journalist. 

Imam Usama Hasan has been caught up in a storm of religious controversy over his views. In an article from the Index archive, he argues that Islam traditionally embraces debate

This article first appeared in the Index on Censorship magazine in 2008

John Pilger famously said that “al Qaeda’s terrorism is puny compared to ours”. He was referring to the “state terrorism” of many governments, including the US, Israel, Indonesia, the Arab world and elsewhere, in terms of inflicting terrible civilian casualties for political purposes. Examples that could be cited are the Allied bombing of Dresden during the Second World War, the nuclear holocausts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the US remains, of course, the only country to have used nuclear weapons of mass destruction), the carpet bombing of farmers in Vietnam, Korea, East Timor and so on.

These are not comfortable issues for us, but we do live in a society that has contradictions. Every society has contradictions, just as human beings do, so whereas we do have an exalted level of human rights and democracy in most western societies, we also have a history of colonialism, imperialism, and a lot of violence in other parts of the world. So perhaps we are in an age of terror.

As a student of sharia, the sacred law of Islam, I know that law is very important to Muslims. But law only sets the boundaries. It does not inform your moral choices and purpose in a direct sense, although these are of course directed by one’s faith and values rooted in God and spirituality.

To give an example of law being ineffective, our former Prime Minister Tony Blair once said that Britain suffers from a loss of respect, and I agree with him: clearly, there has been an erosion of respect at every level of our society. But he went on to say that the government was going to introduce legislation to deal with this lack of respect; I disagree with that completely.

The New Labour government really has passed far too many laws and you cannot force people to have respect by law; people’s sense of respect is related to their morality and education. Similarly, we will not defeat violent extremism or terrorism purely by law: it is only one small part of the solution. “Winning hearts and minds” has become a cliche, but it is nonetheless a vital objective.

This is the basic impetus from within the Muslim community for dealing with violent extremism, theologically and practically. To begin with, we should be clear about terminology: for example, should we talk about extremism or radicalisation? For devout Muslim communities, one way to get messages across effectively is to use terms that resonate with the Quran and the Sunnah, the way of the prophet. I certainly favour the word “extremism” because it is there clearly in the Quran.

We are told in the Quran, “Do not go to extremes in your religion.” The prophet repeatedly warned against extremism. He said, “Beware of extremism in religion, because it will destroy you. It has destroyed religious communities in the past; it will do so in the future.” So we should talk of religious extremism, but perhaps in the context of the sacred texts of Islam and the 14-centuries-old rich history of the Islamic intellectual tradition in dealing with this subject, a matter to which I shall return. Such important work is progressing all round the world, including in the West.

Another example of clarity in terminology is with the idea of “jihad”. As a student of the Quran for over 30 years, I make no apology for the term, especially since I was fortunate enough to have a rare experience of a particular type of jihad. Whilst a Cambridge undergraduate in 1990, I had the opportunity to go to Afghanistan for a brief period to train with the mujahideen and fight with them briefly against the Afghan communists who were still in power in Kabul – the Soviets had withdrawn from the country by then. This was a major influence on the life of a 19-year-old radical – to actually fight in a war zone that I had been watching on television for a decade since childhood.

Now jihad is something very sacred to Muslims. There are numerous Quranic verses about jihad, but they have to be understood in context. It is similar, actually, to the Christian idea of a just war: I prefer to translate jihad as a “sacred war”; some people call it a “holy war”.

Classically, there are four different levels of jihad: jihad against the self, jihad with wealth, jihad with the tongue and jihad with the sword. The inner jihad against the self is the spiritual struggle of good against evil that takes place in every human heart. Jihad with wealth refers to supporting any good cause – a sacrifice of wealth. Jihad with the tongue or the pen or the keyboard – and the Internet, of course, nowadays – refers to airing our views and opposing or fighting what we see as wrong or evil. And finally, the highest level – the most physical or outermost level, going from the inner to the outer – is physical jihad, or military jihad if you like, which has very strict conditions and refers to (sacred) war. Furthermore, life itself can be a constant struggle and is often referred to as a jihad.

It is extremely important to keep in mind all of these aspects of jihad since this is how the term has been understood throughout Islamic history, based on the Quran and the teachings of the prophet, peace be upon him.

Therefore, to criminalise people for “glorifying jihad” or condoning or promoting “violent jihad” is actually very controversial and problematic. In an increasingly globalised world, with the Muslim world listening to all these debates, it’s extremely problematic because this is a core Quranic concept.

For example, the term “violent jihad” could, for many Muslims, include the effort to remove Saddam Hussein, whilst for others it would cover the “resistance” against the Anglo-American invaders of Iraq. It could cover the thousands of Muslim soldiers who laid down their lives in the First and Second World Wars on both sides of the war. For many in the Muslim world, the world wars were really European civil wars, which, because of colonial influence, engulfed the whole world. But there were Muslim countries allied to different sides.

The Ottomans sided with the Germans, for example, in the First World War. And many Indian-Muslim soldiers, of course, fought for the British in those wars. And they would have regarded their struggle as a praiseworthy form of “violent jihad”. They were fighting against injustice, Nazism or fascism. Thus criminalising calls to jihad is problematic and it really does need an understanding at many levels of meaning.

Furthermore, we need to make clear the distinction between jihad and terrorism, a distinction that the vast majority of Muslim theologians consistently maintain and try to articulate. Perhaps it is not so clearly articulated in the West, or even in the East for that matter, and this is something that needs serious attention. We need to have that debate not only within the Muslim community, but also in the public sphere to make the matter quite clear.

An example of this distinction being blurred is the fatwa on suicide bombing in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories that has received widespread attention. There is one particular leading authority who is famous for this fatwa, but there are unfortunately some others who have supported it. This is how the fatwa goes: that Israel is a militarised society because everyone has to do national service and therefore there is no such thing as an Israeli civilian.

Hence, attacks against civilian targets are acceptable in Israel and the occupied territories. This is what the fatwa states and it goes on to say clearly that this argument must not be widened outside Israel and the Palestinian territories. In my view, the fatwa is extremely sloppy, theologically speaking, because the conditions of military jihad include the fact that there must be a war situation, a declared war, and deliberate attacks on civilians or non-combatants are totally outlawed.

The fatwa is also rather illogical because once its argument has been made, there are no grounds for limiting it only to Israel and the occupied territories. The terrorists realise this because the same fatwa has been used, and its logic widened, to include Iraq and Afghanistan, and even London by the 7/7 bombers. Mohammad Sidique Khan, ringleader of the 7/7 bombers, made that point quite clearly in his so-called martyrdom video, referring to Iraq: “This is a war, and I am a soldier.”

I would certainly like to see this fatwa retracted. This would be a very important step. The issue needs to be debated properly, not least within the Muslim world, so that the clerics or jurists who have issued this fatwa are forced by the power of argument to retract it. Apart from being based on sloppy theology and jurisprudence, I think it also displays a very poor understanding of the word itself: in response to the fatwa, the Israelis could easily counter-argue along the following lines. In classical Islamic law, every able-bodied Muslim man is a soldier, and therefore there is no such thing as a male civilian over the age of 15. Thus the Israelis would be entitled to target any able-bodied Muslim men, whether civilians or not, if one followed this logic.

Thank God, the Israelis do not do that, although their treatment of Palestinians under occupation can be extremely brutal. Such fatwas and associated issues clearly have not been thought through properly. This kind of discourse, which is very confused, is popular within the Muslim world. As stated earlier, there are contradictions in every society. Some people say, on the one hand, that Israel must end the blockade of Gaza and provide fuel, food and other supplies, but, on the other hand, that the Gazans simultaneously have a right to resist and have a right to fire rockets at civilian targets in Israel. To demand both matters is, frankly, ridiculous, not to mention evil.

I was told anecdotally that a young Muslim man was arrested at Hyde Park Corner for saying that he supported Hamas. Now, I can understand why he was arrested, but I hope he will be asked some probing questions because, of course, Hamas started as a grassroots movement organisation: it is democratically elected in Gaza and it does much social and welfare work. However, unfortunately, as Colin Powell once said, its track record is seriously tainted by terrorism against Israeli civilians, which is totally unacceptable.

The subject of Israel and the Palestinians brings us to the important issue of grievances. Tony Blair once said that “an entirely false sense of grievance against the West” inspired al Qaeda and its sympathisers. I think he was largely correct in saying that. But I am not convinced that the sense of grievance is entirely false. There is a significant element of justified grievance. But there is also social exclusion: some young people do not buy into British democracy. This is not just to do with foreign policy and the idea that our voices are not heard: we can have a debate – we can go and protest.

Some of us get called into meetings with ministers all the time, and we tell them quite clearly to their faces that we totally disagree with the war in Iraq.

But clearly, social exclusion is a problem. I was horrified when I read an interview with the wife of Mohammad Sidique Khan. This interview was carried out shortly after the London bombings, but it was not published until two years later by the Muslim News. Here was a young Muslim woman, probably born and brought up in this country, and she and her friend and/or sister were saying that they felt socially excluded from Britain. They did not feel part of this society.

There are some serious problems, and especially in some of the northern cities, where we have white and Asian, largely Muslim, no-go areas where the two sides do not dare to venture. We have ghettoisation, almost a kind of apartheid-type situation, which is very sad. And we saw one of the results: the terrible race riots in the summer of 2001. Such situations do feed into far-right extremism. There is no excuse or justification for far-right extremism and racism, but I do think one of the factors behind this is an impatience and frustration within much of British society with the Muslim communities, especially given the number of terrorist plots continuing to surface, even after 7/7, which was clearly not the end of the story.

It was significant that in the recent mayoral election in London, two of the mayoral candidates had specifically anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic messages in their campaigning – for example, asking people to vote against the building of a particular mosque or against the promotion of Islamic cultural features such as the festival of Ramadan. It really is quite shocking that this has happened in 21st-century London.

Continuing on the subject of grievances, just as the Holocaust is very strong in the Jewish consciousness, and 9/11 and 7/7, quite rightly, are very powerful and strong in the American, western and British consciousnesses, so too is Srebrenica for European Muslims. Many people forget, or do not realise, that the entire debacle around the Bosnian war of the 1990s is a massive source of grievance in the Muslim world. So again, the sense of grievance is not entirely false. I still remember being shocked, as all of us were, when a massacre of 8,000 unarmed men and boys was carried out in Srebrenica with the Dutch UN troops looking on. I remember one of the leading and senior Saudi clerics of his day, Sheikh Ibn Uthaymin, who has since passed away, actually giving a sermon about the Srebrenica massacre.

This was unprecedented in Saudia Arabia, the official religious authorities are very strongly controlled politically – they rarely give khutbahs, Friday sermons, about political matters, and certainly not hard-hitting ones.

I remember being shocked myself that a senior Saudi cleric had actually spoken so openly. The wounds of Srebrenica ran very deep. It is pleasing that 16 June is the first day of the hearing for the case brought at The Hague against the UN by Hasan Nuhanovic, who was the official interpreter for the Dutch UN troops in Srebrenica and was separated from his family. His mother, father and brother were literally standing next to him, but they were taken away and never seen again. He begged for them to be safeguarded by the Dutch UN troops, but this was refused. They safeguarded Hasan’s life because he was their interpreter.

He asked to be allowed to join his family and die with them, but his own father told him to stay and continue his important work. Hasan has published a book called Under the UN Flag, documenting the numerous cases where the UN troops, Dutch and others, failed to protect the civilian population in various villages around Bosnia. And finally, after many years of struggling, the hearing began. Justice needs to be done, and needs to be seen to be done in this case, partly to benefit the Muslim world. Mainstream media has a duty to highlight this particular case, because it does have very far-reaching implications.

One would imagine that Srebrenica looms large in al-Qaeda vocabulary as one of a long litany of grievances. So there are some grievances that do need to be dealt with, and justice needs to be seen to be done. The whole Israeli-Palestinian situation is, of course, another one: we desperately need progress in the Middle East.

Traditionally, the Islamic world has dealt with terrorism and extremismfrom within, and has a long history and experience of these problems. So the first violent extremists within Islam were the Khawarij (rebels), who rebelled against the prophet’s son-in-law and cousin, the Fourth Caliph Ali, over a matter of governance. They said, “Your governance is not Islamic” – very similar to al-Qaeda rhetoric against today’s Muslim governments. The way the Muslim community dealt with this problem is very interesting.

First there was a process of debate. So Ibn Abbas, who was a great scholar and commentator of the Quran and a cousin of both the prophet and Ali, actually went and debated with the Khawarij; there were 6,000 of them. He had a debate with them on three key points about their flawed theology, and he won the argument. Thousands of the Khawarij switched sides because they were convinced by his argument; the others were not and remained as rebels. Caliph Ali then fought major pitched battles against them. That has been the Islamic practice. You try to win hearts and minds, but if this fails, you do have to take action.

I know of at least two terror plots that have been foiled by imams in this country, in London. These imams are friends and colleagues of mine. They knew of people who had been convinced by al-Qaeda rhetoric and were planning, or at least thinking, that they were going to carry out a terrorist action and that they would go to heaven by doing so. These two imams convinced them, from Islamic theology, from the normative classical reading of the Quran, that actually what they were doing was completely wrong and evil and they would not go to heaven: they would go to hell. This has also happened in numerous cases in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Egypt and many other places. It is well documented as part of the counter-terrorism strategy.

It is possible for radicals to become mainstream, eg for a young, idealistic person like me, fighting in Afghanistan 20 years ago, to move on. Again, there are plenty of examples of that in the Muslim world. For example, the Khawarij’s theology developed. Once they gained power, they became more pragmatic, as groups in power usually do. The present government of Oman belongs to a theological and legal school (the Ibadi school) that has its roots in the Khawarij tradition.

Also, the Ismaili tradition, which is a very respected one – the Aga Khan and his foundations contribute much to charitable projects – has its roots in the Assassins, who appeared at the time of the Crusades. The word “assassin” comes from the Arabic, hashshashin, ie people who were drugged with hashish and were told they would enter heaven if they did exactly what the leader and founder said. There are documented cases of people who would jump off cliffs to their deaths if their leader said so. They could be seen as a frightening parallel with the suicide bomber of today. The hashshashin even tried to assassinate the great Saladin, several times in fact, but fortunately they failed. Again, they are an example of a very extreme and radical organisation which has actually become mainstream, in a political sense at least, if not theologically, with the Ismaili tradition.

Dr Usama Hasan is an imam at Tawhid mosque in London and director of the City Circle, a network of Muslim professionals based in London. This article first appeared in Index on Censorship in 2008: Volume 37, Number 3. Follow this link to subscribe.

Apple should be part of the open online society, rather than the architects behind a system of control, argues Bill Thompson

It is becoming harder and harder to feel comfortable about the business practices of Apple as it continues its transformation from being a design-obsessed computer company into the authoritarian centrepiece of the digital life of the millions of people who have chosen ‘the Apple Way’.

As a long time Apple user myself, and someone who has introduced many friends and family to Macintosh computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads and the iTunes Store over the years I am beginning to feel like a left-wing writer who, having always spoken up in favour of the Soviet Union, wakes up one morning to find Russian tanks in the streets of Budapest, crushing the nascent Hungarian democracy.

Apple has always exerted rigid control over its products, and this brought many benefits when it only spread as far as the hardware platform, the operating system and Apple-developed software. I could live with a one-button mouse and a limited range of expensive but beautiful hardware platforms because Mac OS allowed me to connect to the internet and install whatever software I liked, even if I had to write it myself. Being able to do it on machines of transcendent beauty like the MacBook Air — on which I’m currently working — was sufficient compensation.

The iPod and its descendants troubled me because they were a closed, controlled and carefully managed platform, and even without the FairPlay digital rights management system, Apple has spent a great deal of time and effort making the iPod product range as closed and un-interoperable as possible, to the extent that I had to buy a copy of a program called Senuti in order to copy legally-acquired music from an iPod that I owned because Apple refuses to make such copying part of iTunes.

My concerns grew when the App Store for portable devices launched with unpublished, restrictive and arbitrarily enforced rules on which apps could be offered, rules that seemed to combine the worst US-style prudishness with a desire on the part of Apple to restrict access to anything that might compete with its own software or reduce its control of users in any way.

This authoritarianism has become unavoidable after it emerged that Apple is insisting that publishers who allow users to buy content that can be delivered to iPhone/iPad apps — like Amazon Kindle books or magazine subscriptions — will be forced to allow them to buy the same content within the application and pay 30 per cent of the revenue to Apple. Suddenly Amazon must pay Apple for the privilege of allowing its customers to read titles on the iPad.

Arguments in favour of Apple’s plan note that tablet computers and e-readers are specialised devices, that users are happy for them to be “tethered” to services that make life easy, and that Amazon charges for access to the Kindle, but now the same sort of system is being extended to computers running Mac OS, with the launch of the Mac App Store, an online service that brings the convenience of iOS-style software purchase, installation and upgrade to all Mac users.

The App Store appeared with the recent Mac OS 10.6.6 update, when users found a new icon in their dock when their computers rebooted that welcomed them to the world of Apple control. Looking like a cross between the iTunes logo and a Masonic sigil, it means there is no need to go to a website or buy a DVD: programs are listed online and can be bought and paid for through a linked Apple account, and upgrades are advertised and installed simply and seamlessly.

The App Store doesn’t stop you downloading, installing and running your own software, because that would be illiberal and wouldn’t fit the West Coast hippy ethos that Apple still likes to be associated with. Like a government-mandated identity system that is not compulsory but is inextricably tied to the passport system, staying out of its clutches will be increasingly difficult and most users will eventually succumb.

They will find that their favourite utilities are no longer available to buy in shops, or that the DVDs in the box that they bring home actually do no more than activate an App Store link. And they will discover that developers have decided to remove anything that Apple may not like or approve of from their software in order to reach large markets, like features that “encourage excessive consumption of alcohol” or “present excessively objectionable or crude content” — all restrictions listed by Apple and all features I personally look for in any program I use.

There will be no trial or beta versions either, which might be rather inconvenient for anyone who wants to try a program before actually purchasing it. Of course life with App Store will be easier for anyone who isn’t concerned about their freedom to run code or the creative potential of the computers they use, and it will help sell Macs to lots of new computer users who worry about keeping programmes updated or don’t understand anything about how their systems work.

It is indeed a brave new world that has such software in it, but like the Brave New World described by Aldous Huxley in his novel, it is one in which freedom is sacrificed for an easy life. Like Soma, the drug that keeps the population content and serene, apps and the App Store offer the vision of a life untroubled by install disks, out of date software or programs that fail to run as advertised.

But perhaps another analogy is more appropriate. In his recent book The Net Delusion Evgeny Morozov points out that the three main pillars of Orwell-style authoritarian control are propaganda, censorship and surveillance.  Replace that with “online adulation”, “restrictive app store guidelines” and “tracking and ownership of subscriber records” and we have a good analogy for the computing world that is currently on offer from Apple.

The question is, does this matter? Apple has a relatively small share of both the computing and the device market and there is plenty of competition. An online store on this model is very unlikely to emerge for Windows computers because Microsoft’s lack of control of the multiple hardware platforms on which Windows run means that there can’t be the same degree of certainty over the target platform so they will remain outside the zone of control, as will anyone who opts for the GNU/Linux free software option.

Nobody has ever forced me to buy Apple or to install a single application from its store. I chose to engage because Apple makes information technology of great beauty and the affordances of my iPhone/iPad/MacBook provide precisely the functions I need to swim in the digital ocean that surrounds me.

But Apple has decided to extend its zone of influence and use its power to assert a moral framework (“apps containing pornographic material will be rejected”) and anti-competitive restrictions (“apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other computer platform will be rejected”) that will limit the imagination and the capabilities of future technologies in a way that will act as a model for other companies and could shape our assumptions going forward.

It is time to speak out against it, to support open platforms and operating systems that allow innovation, free expression and user control and to persuade Apple that they too should be part of the open online society, rather than the architects of a system of control that will be enormous value to those who wish to limit freedom of online expression.

Bill Thompson is a technology critic and commentator on digital culture. He can be found on Twitter at: @billt.

Every year approximately 200 libel writs are issued here in Britain, but only around five cases go to trial; most settle out of court. Little wonder as the cost of defending can be crippling to say the least. This does not take into account the thousands of unaccounted threats sent to writers in accordance with the pre-action defamation protocol.

In 2007 I was sued for an article entitled “Cult divides Sikh congregation in High Wycombe” published in a Birmingham-based newspaper called the Sikh Times. I stood accused of defaming the claimant, a self-proclaimed holy man, of being an “accused cult leader” who had caused a divide amongst members of the British Sikh community. The claimant purported to belong to a newly invented strand of the faith which he described in many ways “the Nirmal Bhekh” or “Nirmal Sikh Faith”, deviating from mainstream Sikh doctrine.

The editor of the publication capitulated early on and printed an apology, leaving me to defend the £150,000 writ all by myself. In retrospect, I could have also chosen to take the path of least resistance and backed off with a grovelling apology, retraction or offer of amends. You may well ask then, why did I choose to fight and go through what I can best describe as three years of living hell? Do you have to be unhinged to fight libel, you may well ask?

I chose to stand for my right of freedom of speech, having uncovered what I felt was a malignant limb on the body of the world’s fifth largest religion. Furthermore I wanted to show how Britain’s libel laws are simply not working when an Indian national (unable to speak English) with no ties to this country whatsoever, instructs a Leeds-based law firm from the comfort of his ‘abode’ in the leafy northern state of Punjab, India.

“Mr. Maharaj” as the Independent called him, had no assets in this jurisdiction and therefore litigated freely on multiple CFAs, knowing all along that even if his claim was unsuccessful it would be difficult to enforce a cost order against him in India. It highlighted the conundrum of a controversial debate: misuse of a CFA can lead to a “chilling effect”, and conversely my access to justice would have been impossible without CFAs with Sahota Solicitors and Carter-Ruck thereafter.

On 1 February 2011 Lord Justice Sedley ordered the appellant pay £250,000 into court within a fortnight. His legal team had surprisingly abandoned the case the day before the hearing on the grounds they had not received any instruction from their client.

The appellant failed to come up with the funds by the expiration of the order by the Court of Appeal for security this week. My nightmare, therefore, has almost ended, but with the prospect of yet another battle ahead to recoup costs in India.

If we are to be successful, I will incur further costs of up to £20,000 and it may take another six to seven years to get back almost £100,000 pounds in costs defending the libel action.
 My case was originally “stayed” by Mr. Justice Eady in May 2010 on the well established point of law, that secular courts should not just be religiously neutral, moreover they should not enter into issues of religious doctrine at all. In the judgment Mr. Justice Eady cited a number of legal authorities including Mr Justice Gray in Blake v Associated Newspapers and Mr Justice Munby in Sulaiman v Juffali; in the latter it is asserted.

“Religion … is not the business of government or of the secular courts. So the starting point of the law is an essentially agnostic view of religious beliefs and a tolerant indulgence to religious and cultural diversity. A secular judge must be wary of straying across the well-recognised divide between church and state. It is not for a judge to weigh one religion against another. All are entitled to equal respect, whether in times of peace or, as at present, amidst the clash of arms”.

Lord Justice Laws concurred, giving an order on 30 June 2010 refusing permission of appeal in writing to the appellant asserting: “I consider Eady J. was right for the reasons he gave”.

A three-year chunk of my life has been eroded away and it has been hideously expensive, torturous and stressful; leaving me with symptoms that could be best described as post traumatic libel syndrome.

Defending a libel action is a bit like being Ann Widdecombe taking the floor on Strictly Come Dancing: you have to get to grips with the raunchy rumba, whilst perfecting a sultry samba; in other words it’s a real challenge and you need versatility, an indomitable spirit and reservoirs of untapped energy to survive the rigours of the cavorting competition. Like Widdecombe, I was definitely the wildcard, against a “Holy man” with comparatively infinite resources and political patronage in India.

[Cartoon © Hardeep Singh]

In March 2009, during the second year of my ordeal, I had the honour of attending a bilateral interfaith dialogue at Lambeth Palace. In his keynote opening address, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, touched on the assumptions of comparable structural hierarchies in disparate faith groups and how they resulted in perceived lines of accountability within faith communities.

He asserted that Hinduism or Sikhism does not have an equivalent system to the Clergy, as in Christianity, so he “would not be looking for a vicar in a turban”.

The ecclesiastical wisdom of the Archbishop’s statement was highlighted, in retrospect, by the ill-informed comparison given by the counsel for the prosecution in pleadings in His Holiness vs. Singh. At an interim hearing overseen by Mrs. Justice Sharpe in February 2010, the counsel asserted:

“It is people like this defendant who are choosing – choosing – because they are not compelled to – to make extremely offensive remarks about the Third Holy Saint.  If we flip it around, most people of ordinary sensitivity would regard it deeply offensive in another jurisdiction if somebody said that the Archbishop of Canterbury was an imposter and a fraud.”

Somehow I can’t see the Archbishop ever issuing a libel writ against someone exercising their right to free speech.

Hardeep Singh is a freelance journalist and broadcaster and the Press Secretary for the Network of Sikh Organisations. He is one of 52,000 signatories at www.libelreform.org

Although the infamous YouTube ban has miraculously ceased, the two and half year ban triggered three different applications to the European Court of Human Rights, all alleging infringement of freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Two further applications about blocked access to Google Sites and Last.fm are currently pending at the Strasbourg Court. Meanwhile, the Turkish courts, and the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB), an administrative body created by Law No. 5651 (entitled “Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed by means of Such Publication”) continue to issue blocking orders.

There is no access to several well-known international websites, including playboy.com, vimeo.com, ffffound.com, and the popular blogging service Blogspot was shut off during the last few months. At the same time Professor Richard Dawkins’s website (richarddawkins.net) has been blocked since September 2008 while a related defamation case slowly progresses through the Turkish civil law court.

The most publicised of the blocked sites include Sanalika.com, a Turkish virtual world and playground;  Azadiyawelat.com, the website of a Kurdish newspaper; Fizy.com, a popular music and video sharing Turkish website which won an award for best music search engine at the 2010 Mashable Awards; and 5Posta.org, a popular blog which contains articles about sexuality, sexual politics, and internet censorship.

Legal challenges

While the number of blocked websites continues to grow, legal challenges to blocking orders have also begun; for example, involving the political website (http://bugunkilicdaroglu.com) which was set up to assess the policies and strategies of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of CHP, the main Turkish opposition party.

The name of this particular blog-style site stands for “Today Kılıçdaroğlu”. The website was immediately noticed by CHP and Kılıçdaroğlu’s lawyers when it was launched in September 2010. Between 17 September and 01 October 2010, the site’s owner Timur Manisali wrote 12 articles on his website.

That was enough criticism for the CHP leader and his lawyers obtained an injunction to block access to the website. Manisali used his website to announce one of the lawyer’s blocking order, along with a farewell article criticising the censorious action.

The blocking order, issued by the Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace, was not communicated directly to Timur Manisali, nor was he given the chance to defend himself. Furthermore, the judgment was unclear because it did not specify the reason for the decision.

In November 2010, Manisali was contacted by Cyber-Rights.Org.TR, a non-profit organisation that offers pro-bono legal assistance to victims of internet censorship in Turkey. A defence team was immediately set up, and an appeal was lodged on 3 December 2010 to overturn the blocking decision with an appellate court, the Ankara 11th Criminal Court of First Instance.

It was argued by the defence that order should be nullified as the issuing court did not have the authority to block access to the website in the first place under Article 9 of Law No. 5651.

It should be pointed out that Article 9 of Law No. 5651 provides a new procedure for internet content in violation of personal rights: the individual alleging that their rights have been infringed by a website is encouraged to seek the removal of the content from the website, but not the blocking of the website carrying the allegedly illegal content.

Article 9 does not contain any provisions on “blocking” and private law matters can only result in “removal” (take down of the particular infringing article), together with the publication of an apology if a Court deems it necessary. Therefore, since 23 May 2007 when the Article 9 provisions came into effect, the courts are no longer empowered to issue blocking orders with regards to private law matters, including for claims of defamation and other personal rights.

The defence in the http://bugunkilicdaroglu.com case pointed this fundamental irregularity to the appellate court. Furthermore, it was argued that the writings of Timur Manisali should be regarded as political speech and therefore, should be protected rather than censored.

The defence argued that there was no defamation on the website, and despite the claims of Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu’s lawyers to the contrary the website did not need any permission to use Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu’s name or photo on the website, or to use his name on the website’s domain name.

Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu is a well-known political figure and as the European Court of Human Rights has stated many times, the limits of permissible criticism are wider with regards to government officials and politicians. In a democratic system the actions or omissions of a politician, in this case the leader of the main Turkish opposition party, must be subject to close scrutiny.

According to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe: “political figures have decided to appeal to the confidence of the public and accepted to subject themselves to public political debate, and are therefore subject to close public scrutiny and potentially robust and strong public criticism through the media over the way in which they have carried out or carry out their functions”.

As to the limits of acceptable criticism, the Strasbourg Court established in Oberschlick v. Austria (no. 2) (judgment of 1 July 1997, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-IV) that:

“they are wider with regards to a politician acting in his public capacity than in relation to a private individual. A politician inevitably and knowingly lays himself open to close scrutiny of his every word and deed by both journalists and the public at large, and he must display a greater degree of tolerance, especially when he himself makes public statements that are susceptible of criticism. [Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu] is certainly entitled to have his reputation protected, even when he is not acting in his private capacity; but the requirements of that protection have to be weighed against the interests of open discussion of political issues, since exceptions to freedom of expression must be interpreted narrowly. “

On 6 January 2011 the Ankara 11th Criminal Court of First Instance overturned the decision of the Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace by lifting the injunction which resulted in the blocking of http://www.bugunkilicdaroglu.com.

The Court accepted the objections raised by the defence team, stating that Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu’s lawyers did not specify their objections with the website in their petition, and further, the complainants can only request the removal of specific content subject to Article 9.

It found that, in any case, the courts cannot issue blocking orders by relying on Article 9. Therefore, according to the Court the blocking order issued by the Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace was illegal.

The unjustified political censorship of Timur Manisali’s website lasted nearly three and a half months. His website is now back online. In a press release he said that his criticism of Mr Kılıçdaroğlu does not exceed the limits of political discourse, and the attempt to limit his freedom of expression was unacceptable.

According to Manisali, rather than spending time to block access to his website, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his political party should criticise the Turkish government’s internet censorship policy.

Undoubtedly the internet censorship saga will continue in Turkey, but there is some hope as the website owners are starting to fight back through these legal channels.

Dr Yaman Akdeniz is Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University, and Director of Cyber-Rights.Org