Mark Boardman/www.mark-boardman.com

Dear Nada,

I regard free speech as a fundamental good, the fullest extension of which is necessary for democratic life and for the development of other liberties. Others view speech as a luxury rather than as a necessity, or at least as merely one right among others, and not a particularly important one. Speech from this perspective needs to be restrained not as an exception but as the norm.

The answer to whether religious and cultural sensibilities should ever limit free expression depends upon which of these ways we think of free speech. For those, like me, who look upon free speech as a fundamental good, no degree of cultural or religious discomfort can be reason for censorship. There is no free speech without the ability to offendreligious and cultural sensibilities.

For those for whom free speech is more a luxury than a necessity, censorship is a vital tool in maintaining social peace and order. Perhaps the key argument made in defence of the idea of censorship to protect cultural and religious sensibilities is that speech must necessarily be less free in a plural society. In such a society, so the argument runs, we need to police public discourse about different cultures and beliefs both to minimise friction and to protect the dignity of individuals, particularly from minority communities. As the sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, “if people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism”.

I take the opposite view. It is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest extension possible of free speech. In such societies it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. And they should be openly resolved, rather than suppressed in the name of “respect” or “tolerance”.

But more than this: the giving of offence is not just inevitable, but also important. Any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply-held sensibilities. Or to put it another way: “You can’t say that!” is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. The notion that it is wrong to offend cultural or religious sensibilities suggests that certain beliefs are so important that they should be put beyond the possibility of being insulted or caricatured or even questioned. The importance of the principle of free speech is precisely that it provides a permanent challenge to the idea that some questions are beyond contention, and hence acts as a permanent challenge to authority. The right to “subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism” is the bedrock of an open, diverse society, and the basis of promoting justice and liberties in such societies. Once we give up such a right we constrain our ability to challenge those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice.

The question we should ask ourselves, therefore, is not “should religious and cultural sensibilities ever limit free expression?” It is, rather, “should we ever allow religious and cultural sensibilities to limit our ability to challenge power and authority?”

Best wishes,

Kenan

Mark Boardman/www.mark-boardman.com

Dear Kenan,

I too regard free speech as a fundamental good and as necessary. On the surface, thus, the simple and direct answer to the question of whether religious and cultural sensibilities should ever limit free expression should be an unequivocal NO! However, the reality is that the question itself is problematic. While free expression, and let’s think of art in this specific case, will always push the limits and “reveal the hidden”, consideration and sensitivity, including religious and cultural sensibility, should not be inherently in opposition. By positioning it as such, the answer can only be reactive. I thus disagree with your argument.

A quick note on “censorship”. Yes, we all hate the word and find it very offensive. It is a word loaded with oppression, but the reality is that censorship in some form exists in every facet of life, personal and public. It is not that one needs to restrict speech in a plural society but that this plurality needs to find a peaceful way of co-existing with respect and acceptance, as much as possible — not tolerance; I personally abhor the word tolerance and find that it generally masks hatred and disdain. No belief is above criticism and nothing should limit our ability to challenge power and authority.

I suppose one needs to decide first the point of this criticism/free expression. Does it have a specific message or reason, and how best to deliver it — or is it simply someone’s personal free expression in the absolute? And if it is someone’s right to free expression, then why is it privileged above someone else’s right — religious and cultural sensibility being someone’s right to expression as well?

For example, and I will use art again, there is a problem when art/the artist is privileged as “genius”, with rights above other citizens — except not really, since the artist is subject to other limitations that may not be religious or cultural, like those of the tradition of expression, funding, law and so on. This is not to say that a religion should dictate expression. We should remember, though, that the marvel of what we call Islamic art was achieved within full respect of Islamic religious sensibilities, but also pushed the limits and critiqued simplicity in interpreting these sensibilities.

Perhaps my view here is less idealistic and more practical, but I see many unnecessary attacks on all sides that do not accomplish anything other than insult and inflame. All I’m saying is that expression is always achieved through negotiations, including limitations.

All the best,

Nada

Dear Nada,

I’m afraid that I was no clearer at the end of your letter than I was at the beginning about your actual stance on free speech. You say you ‘regard free speech as a fundamental good’ and that the answer to “whether religious and cultural sensibilities should ever limit free expression should be an unequivocal NO!”  You then, however, go on seemingly to qualify that unequivocal stance but without actually specifying what it is that you wish to qualify. Where should the line be drawn when it comes to the issue of what is and is not legitimate free speech? Who should draw that line? And on what basis? These are the critical questions that need answering. You write: “It is not that one needs to restrict speech in a plural society but that this plurality needs to find a peaceful way of co-existing with respect and acceptance”. It’s a wonderful sentiment, but what does it actually mean in practice? Should Salman Rushdie not have written The Satanic Verses so that he could find “a peaceful way of coexisting with respect and acceptance”? Was the Birmingham Rep right to drop Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti after protests from Sikhs? Should Jerry Springer: The Opera ever have been staged (or broadcast)?

You suggest that “one needs to decide first the point of this criticism/free expression. Does it have a specific message or reason, and how best to deliver it — or is it simply someone’s personal free expression in the absolute?” Again, I am unclear as to the point you’re making here. Are you suggesting here that speech is only legitimate if it has “a specific message or reason”? If so,who decides whether it does? During the controversy over The Satanic Verses, the philosopher Shabbir Akhtar distinguished between “sound historical criticism” and “scurrilously imaginative writing”, and insisted that Rushdie’s novel fell on the wrong side of the line. Do you agree with him? If not, why not? You ask: “If it is someone’s right to free expression, then why is it privileged above someone else’s right — religious and cultural sensibility being someone’s right to expression as well?”  This seems to me a meaningless question. A “sensibility” is not a “right”, still less a “right to expression”. If your point is that all people, whatever their religious or cultural beliefs, should have the right to express those beliefs, then I agree with you. That is the core of my argument. What they do not have is the “right” to prevent anybody expressing their views because those views might offend their “sensibilities”.

A final point: to defend the right of X to speak as he or she wishes is not the same as defending the wisdom of X using speech in a particular fashion, still less the same as defending the content of his or her speech. Take, for instance, The Innocence of Muslims, the risibly crude and bigoted anti-Muslim video that provoked so much controversy and violence last year. I would defend the right of such a film to be made. But I would also question the wisdom of making it, and would strongly challenge the sentiments expressed in it. There is a distinction to be drawn, in other words, between the right to something and the wisdom of exercising that right in particular ways. It is a distinction that critics of free speech too often fail to understand.

Best,

Kenan

Dear Kenan,

Nicely said! I believe we are ultimately saying the same thing. It is that “distinction” that you outline in your last paragraph that I call a negotiation between all sides, cultures, etc. My answer is not clear because the issue is not simple! I am saying that it is not a black and white binary divide nor can one “draw a line”. And yes, “who should draw that line? and on what basis?” is critical and essential. I believe that should be reached through negotiation. The “wisdom” of something to exist is as important as its right to exist. But there is also the question of responsibility. Free speech cannot be “inherently good” or bad. The person who utters that speech must claim responsibility for its use and effects. The examples you cite above are not all equal. Yes, they all have the right to exist. But let’s think a bit about the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed as another example. Were they not an attack aimed to inflame Muslim communities? Was it not part of Islamophobia?

Was the aim not to ridicule and play off people’s fears and prejudices? How were they a critique of Islam? What was the point? It is not that “it is morally unacceptable to cause offence to other cultures” as you once said, but the how and why are just as important as the right to cause that offence. I agree with you that the fear of consequences has become a limitation, but that isperhaps because free speech has been abused.

Perhaps I am looking at this from a different point of view. As an educator, I often face the situation, equally here in the US and in the Middle East, of how to argue a point that has become of specific cultural/religious/political sensitivity to my students. If I offend them here, they will stop listening; in the Middle East, I will not be allowed to continue. What would I gain by doing that? By negotiation I test the limits and push gently. At least in academia, I think we are at a point where we have to teach our students to not get offended by an opposing opinion and to be able to accept various opinions and to be able to accept criticism. I don’t think I can achieve that through shock alone!

Best, Nada

Kenan Malik is a writer and broadcaster. His latest book is From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy (Atlantic Books)

Nada Shabout is associate professor of art education and art history at the University of North Texas and director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute

This article appears in Fallout: free speech and the economic crisis. Click here for subscription options and more.

The post Should religious or cultural sensibilities ever limit free expression? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

While they exist harmoniously on paper, free expression and religion often conflict in practice, and free speech is often trampled in the name of protecting religious sensibilities — whether through self-censorship or legislation that censors.

History offers many examples of religious freedom being repressed too. Both free expression and religious freedom need protection from those who would meddle with them. And they are not necessarily incompatible.

Over 200 years ago, the United States’ founding fathers grouped together freedom of worship and freedom of speech. The US Constitution’s First Amendment, adopted in 1791, made sure that the Congress couldn’t pass laws establishing religions or prohibiting their free exercise, or abridging freedom of speech, press and assembly.

More recently, both religion and free expression were offered protection by The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) drafted in 1949. It outlines the ways in which both free expression and religious freedom should be protected in Articles 18 and 19. Article 18 protects an individual’s right to “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” and the freedom to change religion or beliefs. Article 19 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Why is it, then, that for centuries — from the Spanish Inquisition to the Satanic Verses — free speech and religion have been cast as opponents? Index on Censorship has explored, and will continue to explore, this crucial question.

Offence

Muslims gathered in Malaysia’s capital to protest against the controversial Innocence of Muslims film (Demotix)

Sporadically explosive conflicts arrise when words or images offensive to believers spark a violent response, the most recent example being the reaction to the controversial Innocence of Muslims film. Index has stated before that the majority of states restrain by law distinct and direct incitements to violence; however, causing offence doesn’t constitute an incitement to violence, much less a good excuse to react with violence. Yet violent protests sparked by the YouTube film led many countries to push for the video to be taken down. As the controversy unfolded, digital platforms took centre stage in an age-old debate on where the line is drawn on free speech.

The kind of connectivity provided by the web means a video uploaded in California can lead to riots in Cairo. Real-time transmission, real-time unrest. It presents a serious challenge for hosts of user-generated content like YouTube and Facebook.

Before the web, British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie’s “blasphemous” 1988 novel — The Satanic Verses — sparked protests and earned its author a death sentence from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who called upon Muslims to assassinate the novelist, his publishers, and anyone else associated with the book. The Japanese translator of the Satanic Verses was killed, and Rushdie’s Norwegian publisher was shot and wounded, leading some to think twice about publishing works potentially “offensive to Islam”.

These fears were renewed after the 2005 decision of Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which were protested about in riots worldwide, largely initiated as a result of agitation by Danish clerics.

The Jewel of Medina, a historical novel about the life of Muhammad’s wife Aisha was due to be published by Random House in the US in 2008, but it was pulled when an academic warned the publishers of a possible violent backlash to the novel. After the UK-based publisher Gibson Square decided to take on the novel, Islamic extremists attempted to firebomb the home of the company’s chief executive. More recently, ex-Muslim and author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook Alom Shaha wrote that initially, staff at Biteback publishing had reservations about releasing his book in the UK. Upon being presented with the book, one staff member’s reaction was, “we can’t publish this, we’ll get firebombed”.

Protecting religious sensitivities at price of free expression

Many countries have legislation designed to quell religious tensions and any ensuing violence.

India, for example, has a Penal Code with provisions to protect “religious feelings”, making “acts” or “words” that could disturb religious sensitivities punishable by law. However, while such laws exist to address prevent sectarian violence their vagueness means that they can also be used by groups to shut down free expression. This opens up a question, which is when do states have the right to censor for public order reasons even if the actual piece of writing, art or public display is not a direct incitement to violence.

Indian artist and Index award winner was forced to leave his native India in the 1990s after being threatened for his work

In the 1990s, Indian artist and Index award winner MF Husain was the subject of a violent intimidation campaign after painting Hindu gods and goddesses naked. He received death threats and had his work vandalised. Hundreds of complaints were brought against the artist, leading to his prosecution under sections 295 and 153A of India’s Penal Code, which outlaw insulting religions, as well as promoting animosity between religious groups. Locally these laws are justified as an effort to control sectarian violence. While the cases against Husain were eventually thrown out, the spectre of new legal battles combined with violent threats and harassment pushed Husain to flee his home country. He never returned, and died in exile last year.

Across the world restrictions on free expression are imposed using laws designed to protect religious sensitivities.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are notorious for being abused to silence and persecute the country’s religious minorities. Although the country’s Penal Code has always had a section on religious offence, clauses added in the 1980s set a high price for blasphemy or membership of the Ahmadi sect of Islam — an Islamic reformist movement. These laws, including a possible death sentence for insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, have been slammed by civil society inside and outside of Pakistan.

A report issued in September by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, says that blasphemy laws should be repealed. Controls on free speech in order to protect religious sensibility seem to run parallel to controls on religion.

Globally, restrictions on religious expression have increased according to a report released last month by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, the study found that 75 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries where restrictions placed on religious practice were rated as either “high” or “very high”. The study found that the greatest restrictions on religion take place in the world’s most heavily populated countries — India, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, and Russia stood out on the list.

Outrage and incitement to religious hatred

In 1977 Christian campaigner Mary Whitehouse successfully brought charges against the publishers of a magazine that printed a graphic sexual poem about Jesus Christ

In 2007, the UK introduced the offence of “incitement to religious hatred”, which some feared was merely a replacement for the scrapped blasphemy law, made more wide-ranging by covering not just Christianity but all religions. The last conviction under that law was the infamous 1977 Gay News case, where Christian campaigner Mary Whitehouse brought a successful private prosecution against the publishers of Gay News magazine for publishing a poem describing a Roman soldier’s fantasy of sex with Jesus Christ.

In the UK, one of the most pernicious means by which restrictions on free speech have grown tighter has been through the use of incitement laws, both incitement to hatred and incitement to violence and murder. In some cases, as in the outlawing of incitement to religious hatred through the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, the law is being used to censor genuine debate. In other cases, incitement law is being used to shut down protest, as in the convictions of Muslim protestors Mizanur Rahman and Umran Javed for inciting racial hatred and ‘soliciting murder’ during a rally in London against the publications of the Danish Muhammed cartoons. Over the past decade, the government has used the law both to expand the notion of ‘hatred’ and broaden the meaning of ‘incitement’. Much of what is deemed ‘hatred’ today is in fact the giving of offence. And should’t the giving of offence be viewed as a normal and acceptable part of plural society?

In 2009, Ireland created for the first time a specific blasphemy offence. This law states a person is guilty of blasphemy if

“he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and

(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”

This wording was later used as a template for attempts to introduce the idea of “defamation of religion” as an offence at the United Nations. The attempt to introduce this concept failed, but the UN Human Rights Council did pass a resolution condemning “intolerance, negative stereotyping, stigmatisation, discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against, persons based on religion or belief”.

On the other hand, according to Frank La Rue, quoted by Journalism & Intolerance said: “blasphemy is a horrible cultural phenomenon but, again, should not be censored or limited by criminal law. I would like to oppose blasphemy in general by being respectful, but that’s something you build in the culture and the traditions and the habits of the people, but not something you put in the criminal code. Then it becomes censorship.”

Crushing religious freedom

Other European countries have had their own free speech versus religion battle when a push towards bans on the veil or niqab began, infringing on choices of Muslim women. France’s controversial ban on the niqab went into effect last year. Offenders must pay a 150 € fine or take French citizenship classes. There have been similar discussions in the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Such bans are not restricted to Europe — in 2010 Syria banned face veils from university campuses. From 1998 – 2010, Turkey banned headscarves from university campuses. In fact, Turkey has a much wider ban on headscarves in public buildings, a ban the government faces difficulties overturning though it would like to. Just as troubling — countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia have strict dress codes for women that visitors must comply with as well.

Both enforced secularism and enforced religiosity constitute a form of censorship; the key word being “enforced” as opposed to “free”. Whether it is tackling enforced religion, religious offence, hatred and incitement to violence, or enforced secularism, only a constructive approach to free speech can genuinely guarantee freedom of conscience and belief, whether in one god, many or none.

Also read:

Kenan Malik on The Satanic Verses and free speech and Why free expression is now seen as an enemy of liberty

We need to talk about Islam says Alom Shaha

Salil Tripathi on how Pakistan’s deadly blasphemy laws have killed free speech

Michael Nugent on why Ireland’s 2009 blasphemy law is a backward step

The post Religion and free speech: it’s complicated appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Fearing extremists reacting violently to the publication of books deemed to be offensive to Islam, many publishers have thought twice about what they release about the religion. Author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook Alom Shaha says it’s time to discuss faith properly

It’s not just staff at Biteback who may have been concerned about publishing my book — according to a senior editor at one of the largest international publishers, who claimed to be personally keen to give me a deal, she was unable to convince her colleagues to agree because a “number of people” in the company would be “uncomfortable” about it. She then went on to explain that by “uncomfortable” she really meant “afraid”.

So, what is it about my book that has elicited such a response from people whose work it is to trade in ideas? Have I penned an incendiary tome that “insults” Islam or otherwise risks “offending” Muslims? Well, I don’t think I’ve done any such thing — I’ve simply written an account of how and why I came to be an atheist. It’s much less an attack on religion than it is a celebration of atheism. But the fact that it is written by someone from a Muslim background seems to have been sufficient to make some people afraid of publishing it. And that is surely an unacceptable state of affairs; we seem to have gone from a time when publishers and booksellers stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of free speech to publish and sell The Satanic Verses, despite the very real threat of violence, to a time when an entirely innocuous book like mine can be rejected for publication because people fear it will lead to violent repercussions.

Perhaps publishers cannot be blamed for being cautious? After all, as recently as September 2008 the offices of Gibson Square were indeed firebombed just as it was about to publish The Jewel of Medina, a fictional account of the life of Mohammed’s youngest wife, by Sherry Jones. But, as both Kenan Malik and Nick Cohen have described elsewhere, the firebombing may not have been caused so much by the “offensive” nature of the book as much as by the fact that the book was publicly announced to be offensive by a Western and non-Muslim academic. It may have been the case that the book would largely have been ignored by Muslims had it not been for the publicity generated by this — having been pronounced offensive, it then almost required at least one fanatic to act. Jones believes that “If Random House had simply published my book, I don’t think there would have been any trouble. The real problem is not that Muslims are offended but that people think they will be.”

I’ve encountered the idea that Muslims will be offended by my book from numerous people — from the publishers who looked at my proposal to the people who have interviewed me since publication and even from some friends. The only people who have not suggested that the book might be offensive to Muslims are Muslims themselves. Not a single Muslim has come forward to say that he or she has been offended by my book. The most strongly worded email I’ve received is one that expressed pity that I had “lost the one truth path” and the hope that “Allah would guide [me] back to it”.

Many of my childhood friends are Muslims and none of them has taken offence at the book. And this should come as no surprise. The idea that Muslims are particularly sensitive to criticism is one that has been blown out of all proportion. It is patronising to ordinary Muslims like my friends and it is one that has created an insidious climate of self-censorship amongst people who really should know better.

We need to talk about Islam, not because of some misguided notion that it threatens our western way of life but because we cannot ignore a set of ideas which holds such importance to so many people. Islam must be critiqued just as other ideas are, but perhaps even more importantly, Muslims and non-Muslims alike must have access to diverse points of views if public discourse about these matters is to be meaningful and well-informed. The publication of my book by Biteback was not brave, nor was it an attempt to court controversy for the sake of book sales. Rather, it was a decision made by people who love books and ideas, who felt that my story was one worth telling and that it would find an audience — and this, surely, is the only consideration publishers should have when deciding whether or not to publish a book.

Alom Shaha is a writer, science teacher, filmmaker and author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook. He tweets from @alomshaha

MORE ON THIS THEME:

Kenan Malik wrote about the impact of the Satanic Verses controversy on free expression and Islam for Index on Censorship magazine in 2008. Read his article here 

Jewel of Medina author Sherry Jones wrote for Index on Censorship about fears over distributing her 2008 novel about prophet Muhammad’s youngest wife, Aisha. Read her article here 

The post We need to talk about Islam appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Legal proceedings have been filed against four authors that read aloud from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic verses. Salil Tripathi explains how outdated Colonial-era legislation is being used to curtail free expression. 

The saga refuses to end.

The Jaipur story has now taken a new turn, on Monday (6 February) two courts in the city began legal proceedings after complaints were filed by among others, members of an organisation that campaigned against Salman Rushdie’s participation in the Jaipur Literature Festival. They allege that the festival organisers and four authors who read from Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims.

The four authors — Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru, Ruchir Joshi, and Jeet Thayil — read from the novel to express solidarity with the absent Rushdie, and as a mark of protest. Rushdie did not go to Jaipur after he received plausible information that security forces had evidence of death threats against him. Now the festival’s organisers are also being charged under provisions of India’s criminal laws, which date back to the colonial era.

The complainants main contention is that the authors and the festival organisers conspired “to promote enmity on grounds of religion.” One magistrate has recorded the complaint to decide if the case has any merit before it is sent to the police to register a First Information Report. That case will now be heard on 8 March. Another magistrate will record a complainant’s statement today. When such complaints are filed, the court can either ask the police to register a report and launch an investigation, or examine the complaint on its own, before deciding if the matter deserves to be sent to the police for further action. The courts have decided to examine the matter first, before sending it to the police.

The relevant sections under the Indian law are:

295-A (which deals with deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings)

298 (uttering words with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings),

153-A (promoting enmity between groups on religious grounds),

153-B (imputations prejudicial to national integration)

120-B (criminal conspiracy).

Preserving communal harmony is a serious matter in India. These laws empower the state to prosecute anyone whose intends to and acts in a way that outrages religious feelings or promotes “enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language,” and the all-important, all-inclusive “etc.”

Now think again about what happened in Jaipur: the four authors read extracts from The Satanic Verses, whose import is banned in India. Note, its import is banned in India; lawyers have pointed out that the government did not ban its printing or publishing — rather, Penguin, which had the rights to publish it in India, chose not to do so after the import ban was imposed, and its consulting editor recommended that it would be unwise to publish the novel. Leading Indian lawyers say that bane does not extend to reading the novel, or reading from it. In fact, in the years after the ban, several lawyers and writers read from it in public, as a mark of protest. They weren’t charged at any time. At the Jaipur Festival, parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor, author and former diplomat, said he has read from, or cited the novel, without any problem.

And yet, now the four authors and the festival’s organisers — William Dalrymple, Namita Gokhale, and Sanjoy Roy — face the prospect of being charged under colonial-era laws. Such a prosecution mocks India’s fine judicial traditions and runs counter to its constitutional guarantees of free speech (which are, it must be said, limited). It means if you say anything that someone considers controversial or offensive, then either that individual or the state can begin proceedings that could lead to prosecution. This isn’t a theoretical proposition, nor is this the first such complaint. Many film-makers, authors, and artists have been scarred by threats of such prosecutions. Many have sued for peace by dropping contentious material before publication; some have been prosecuted. Higher courts have usually dismissed the charges, but not before a long process that’s costly and stressful. (There is also the other threat of vigilantes doling out justice in the form of ransacked galleries or theatres, or attacks on artists, with the police doing little to stop such violence). This is preposterous — but such is the state of affairs.

Neither the authors nor the festival organisers incited any community, nor did they intend to insult any religious group. The festival organisers have said they were not aware that the authors intended to protest. After the four read from the novel, the organisers even issued a statement saying the authors had acted on their own. But none of that seems to matter to the complainants.

The charge is even more confusing since there has been no violence. Nobody went on a rampage; there was no riot. The four had never intended to incite anybody, and nobody got incited. However, some Muslim fundamentalist groups had offered rewards to throw shoes at Rushdie, or spit on Rushdie. Others had said that even a video appearance by Rushdie could have repercussions, irrespective of what he might say. Many might regard these statements as threats, but as of now, no police officer has pressed charges against any of those individuals, who were at least implying that matters might get out of hand for which, of course, they would presumably claim no responsibility.

And so it is that the one who claims offence and threatens to take the law in his hands, or suggests others might do so, remains free; the ones who read from a book are being charged under laws meant to prevent violence.

The Indian Penal Code, from which these sections are derived, was drafted in 1860, and much of that law has stayed fossilised, even though India gained Independence in 1947. It is important to remember the circumstances under which that law was drafted. In 1857, many princely states in India rebelled against the rule of the East India Company, and what followed was what India calls the first war of independence, and what Britain remembers as the Sepoy Mutiny. Soldiers of the East India Company rebelled against the company, and united with various princely states in a vain attempt to overpower the colonial rule. The war ended in 1858, with the Indian states surrendering, and soon thereafter, company rule ended, and Queen Victoria became the Empress of India.

There were many reasons for the uprising, but the immediate spark was religious. Indian troops in the East India Company’s army were alarmed by rumours that the new British cartridges were greased with cow or pig fat. Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike were offended, unwilling to handle ammunition contaminated by animal fat which the respective faiths shunned.

Realising the combustible power of religion, the British decided to make maintenance of religious harmony their priority, and to do that, they took advantage of mutual suspicion among the communities. So anyone who disrupted harmony would be prosecuted, and people had the right to complain against anyone who disrupted such harmony, turning the “subjects” into informers. Colonial rulers had good reason to maintain such laws — to keep communities suspicious of one another and divided just short of fighting.

Free India is supposed to be democratic; its adult citizens vote their governments, and they argue with each other in a spirited manner. But these laws, relics of the raj, treat Indians as subjects, not citizens. They allow troublemakers to file spurious complaints under the provisions of these laws and restrict free expression, as had happened to the great painter, the late M.F. Husain, who was driven out of India, and died in exile in London last year. The same provisions are now being used against the novelists and organisers of a festival of literature.

This has gone on too long. Before it gets any worse, India needs adult supervision; it needs to repeal these laws, stop proceedings against the authors and festival organisers, and keep a stern eye on rabble-rousers who cry offence and threaten violence because they don’t like other people reading a book they haven’t read and which they are told they must dislike.

You can dislike a book; nothing is sacred. But if you don’t like a book, Rushdie had said in India in 2010, all you have to do is to shut it.

Instead, they want to shut conversations across the country through intimidation.

Salil Tripathi is a journalist and author and the chair of English PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee

The post India: How to silence a nation appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Liverpool had its Fab Four, but now Jaipur in India has its own Fab Five — writers Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru, Jeet Thayil, Ruchir Joshi and Anand.

When the Rajasthan police apparently concocted a fictitious assassination plot leading Salman Rushdie to stay away from the Jaipur Literature Festival, the mood in Jaipur was glum. Everyone took the plot to be real, until The Hindu reported the convoluted manipulation by the police.

Many in India wanted to hear Rushdie, who avoided India during the fatwa years and has been able to make only a few visits since 2000. Festival goers were hoping to hear him speak about the filming of Midnight’s Children and his forthcoming memoir. But protests from Muslim groups and the plausible threat made him change his mind.

Which is where the Fab Four came in. On Friday, Poughkeepsie, NY-based Kumar, who teaches at Vassar and who has irritated Hindu nationalists in the past with his magnificent, in-your-face memoir, Husband of a Fanatic started reading passages from The Satanic Verses. Hari Kunzru, a British-Indian novelist based in New York  also took a stand at the same panel discussion. Both novelists stopped reading after the alarmed festival organisers pleaded with them.

Kunzru, a former English PEN vice-president, takes freedom of expression seriously. When the European Writers’ Parliament met in Istanbul and Turkish authors protested against the presence of VS Naipaul, forcing Naipaul to cancel his appearance, Kunzru spoke out. Reading from Rushdie’s controversial novel was no different.

The mood in Jaipur had changed. By  Friday afternoon, unexpectedly, the poet and novelist Jeet Thayil picked another passage from The Satanic Verses, and read aloud. Finally, Ruchir Joshi, film-maker and novelist, whose magical The Last Jet-Engine Laugh is an uproarious account of a futuristic India, read from The Satanic Verses. Tensions rose.

Soon thereafter, the police arrived, making inquiries about illegal conduct at the festival. Importing The Satanic Verses into India is prohibited but the law is unclear if possessing the novel is a crime, or reading aloud an extract from it is a crime. A lawyer or the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, the only local civil society group to support Rushdie last week, said that as the four authors read extracts from downloads, and not a book, it may not be a crime. Shashi Tharoor, novelist, diplomat, and parliamentarian pointed out he has routinely quoted and cited from The Satanic Verses and never been troubled.

In any case, the police should not throw around terms terms such as “guilt” and “crime”, as they have been doing, when they haven’t filed charges, nor proved their case before a judge.

The government could claim that by reading from the novel the authors incited the public. But incited to do what? Demand overturning the ban, nothing more. In fact, eyewitnesses say that the four authors were listened to in respectful silence, and warmly applauded. In any case, if the government wishes to proceed against the authors and is really mean-spirited, it could do so under S. 295A which gives the state the power to use criminal law against individuals who may have intended to cause trouble. But was there criminal intent, or mens rea? Sure, this is defiance, and it challenges a governmental act but it is Gandhian in its peaceful nature.

Police are seeking recordings of the reading, which, at the time of writing, the festival organisers are refusing to hand over. It is clear that the Rajasthan Police’s actions are meant to intimidate the authors and their supporters.

The role of the festival organisers — while their position is delicate — also requires scrutiny. If an author read from Ma Jian’s Beijing Coma, or Liu Xiaobo’s poems, or displayed Ai Wei Wei’s art at a public event in China, one would expect that the police would swoop down, and the organisers would very likely be forced to hand over the author to the Chinese security.

But this is India; a nation that holds elections, calls itself a democracy, and has a constitution that offers some protection for free speech. The actions of the Indian government in recent days, the intimidation of the five writers and its pusillanimity over Rushdie’s visit fall considerably short of India’s aspirations and claims.

While the organisers haven’t yet handed over the tapes, they told the authors to leave Jaipur immediately, lest they be arrested. It is not known if they offered them any protection. Worse, a lawyerly statement was issued, which in effect blamed the authors for “disturbing the peace”, because they acted outside the confines of the law. The organisers dissociated themselves from the action — which they can make a case for,  but did not uphold the four’s right to speak freely, which is harder to justify. They should have said that even though they disagreed with the action, they’d defend the principle of free speech. But India isn’t there yet, it seems.

Future participants, apparently, will have to conform to rules not yet defined, so that they act within the confines of the law. Such rules defeat the rationale of a festival of literature, where ideas are expressed to be argued over and debated; such rules restrict fundamental freedoms.

On Sunday, the writer Anand —who publishes dalit literature under the imprint Navayana — joined the protests, reading an eloquent passage from The Satanic Verses, which underscores the spirit of the protests:

What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive: or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits: but, the hundredth time, will change the world.

On Monday, leading Indian writers began to circulate a petition to the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, calling for the ban on The Satanic Verses to be lifted. The battle to undo the damage of the past quarter century has begun.

There are no ifs and buts. As Rushdie wrote in The Satanic Verses:

A Poets work (is) to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.

It is time for India to wake up.

Sign the petition for the ban on The Satanic Verses to be lifted

Salil Tripathi is a journalist and author and the chair of English PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee

The post Writers take a stand against Rushdie ban appeared first on Index on Censorship.

‘Shadow of the Fatwa’ first appeared in Index on Censorship, Volume 37, Number 4, 2008

The Satanic Verses was, Salman Rushdie said in an interview before publication, a novel about “migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death”. It was also a satire on Islam, “a serious attempt”, in his words, “to write about religion and revelation from the point of view of a secular person”. For some that was unacceptable, turning the novel into “an inferior piece of hate literature” as the British-Muslim philosopher Shabbir Akhtar put it.

Within a month, The Satanic Verses had been banned in Rushdie’s native India, after protests from Islamic radicals. By the end of the year, protesters had burnt a copy of the novel on the streets of Bolton, in northern England. And then, on 14 February 1989, came the event that transformed the Rushdie affair — Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa.

“I inform all zealous Muslims of the world,” proclaimed Iran’s spiritual leader, “that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses — which has been compiled, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the prophet and the Quran — and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its contents are sentenced to death.”

Thanks to the fatwa, the Rushdie affair became the most important free speech controversy of modern times. It also became a watershed in our attitudes to freedom of expression. Rushdie’s critics lost the battle — The Satanic Verses continues to be published. But they won the war. The argument at the heart of the anti-Rushdie case — that it is morally unacceptable to cause offence to other cultures — is now widely accepted.

In 1989, even a fatwa could not stop the continued publication of The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding for almost a decade. Translators and publishers were assaulted and even murdered. In July 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, a Japanese professor of literature and translator of The Satanic Verses, was knifed to death on the campus of Tsukuba University.

That same month, another translator of Rushdie’s novel, the Italian Ettore Capriolo, was beaten up and stabbed in his Milan apartment. In October 1993, William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses, was shot three times and left for dead outside his home in Oslo. None of the assailants was ever caught. Bookshops in America and elsewhere were firebombed for stocking the novel. It was rumoured that staff at the Viking Penguin headquarters in New York were forced to wear bomb-proof vests. Yet Penguin never wavered in its commitment to Rushdie’s novel [see pp121---126].

Today, all it takes is a letter from an outraged academic to make publishers run for cover: earlier this year, Random House torpedoed the publication of a novel that it had bought for $100,000 for fear of setting off another Rushdie affair. Written by the American journalist Sherry Jones, The Jewel of Medina is a historical romance about Aisha, Mohammed’s youngest wife.

In April 2008, Random House sent galley proofs to writers and scholars, hoping for cover endorsements. One of those on the list was Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of history and Middle East studies at the University of Texas. Jones had used Spellberg’s work as a source for her novel. Spellberg, however, condemned the book as “offensive”. She phoned an editor at Random House, Jane Garrett, to tell her that the book was “a declaration of war” and “a national security issue”.

Spellberg apparently claimed that The Jewel of Medina was “far more controversial than The Satanic Verses or the Danish cartoons”, that there was “a very real possibility” of “widespread violence” and that “the book should be withdrawn ASAP”. The American academic Stanley Fish, writing in the New York Times, rejected the idea that the Random House decision to pull the novel amounted to censorship. It is only censorship, he suggested, when “it is the government that is criminalising expression” and when “the restrictions are blanket ones”. Random House was simply making a “judgment call”.

There is indeed a difference between a government silencing a writer with the threat of legal sanction or imprisonment and a publisher pulling out of a book deal. It is also true that other publishers picked up Jones’s novel, including Beaufort in America, and Gibson Square in Britain. But Fish misses the point about the changing character of censorship. The Random House decision is not a classical example of state censorship.

It is, however, an example of the way that free speech is becoming more restricted — without the need for such overt censorship. The directors of Random House had every right to take the decision they did. But the fact that they took that decision, and the reasons for which they did, says much about how attitudes to free speech have changed over the past 20 years. In the two decades between the publication of The Satanic Verses and the pulling of The Jewel of Medina the fatwa has effectively been internalised.

After Random House dropped The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones’s agent tried other publishers. No major house was willing to take the risk. Nor is it just publishers that worry about causing offence. These days theatres savage plays, opera houses cut productions, art galleries censor shows, all in the name of cultural sensitivity.

“You would think twice, if you were honest,” said Ramin Gray, the associate director at London’s Royal Court Theatre, when asked if he would put on a play critical of Islam. “You’d have to take the play on its individual merits, but given the time we’re in, it’s very hard, because you’d worry that if you cause offence then the whole enterprise would become buried in a sea of controversy. It does make you tread carefully.”

In June 2007, the theatre cancelled a new adaptation of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, set in Muslim heaven, for fear of causing offence. Another London theatre, the Barbican, carved chunks out of its production of Tamburlaine the Great for the same reason, while Berlin’s Deutsche Oper cancelled a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo in 2006 because of its depiction of Mohammed.

That same year, London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening, ostensibly for “space constraints”, though the true reason appeared to be fear that the nudity might offend the gallery’s Muslim neighbours. Tim Marlow of London’s White Cube art gallery suggested that such self-censorship by artists and museums was now common, though “very few people have explicitly admitted [it]”.

Islam has not been alone in generating such censorship. In 2005, Britain’s Birmingham Repertory Theatre cancelled a production of Bezhti, a play by the young Sikh writer Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, that depicted sexual abuse and murder in a gurdwara. There had been protests from community activists who had organised demonstrations outside the theatre.

In the wake of those protests, Ian Jack, then editor of the literary magazine Granta, nailed his colours to the cause of artistic self-censorship; a necessity, he believed, in a plural society. “The state has no law forbidding a pictorial representation of the prophet,” he wrote. “But I never expect to see such a picture.” An individual might have the abstract right to depict Mohammed, but the price of such freedom was too high when compared to the “immeasurable insult” that the exercise of such a right could cause — even though “we, the faithless, don’t understand the offence”. And that a year before the cartoon controversy.

All this reveals how successful the fatwa has been, not in burying The Satanic Verses, but in transforming the landscape of free speech. From the Enlightenment onwards, freedom of expression had come to be seen as not just as an important liberty, but as the very foundation of liberty.

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties,” wrote John Milton in Areopagitica, his famous “speech for the liberty of unlicenc’d printing”, adding that “He who destroys a good book destroys reason itself.” All progressive political strands that grew out of the Enlightenment were wedded to the principle of free speech.

Of course, few liberals advocated absolute freedom of expression. Most accepted that in certain circumstances speech could cause harm and so had to be restricted. The most celebrated expression of such a view came in a judgment given by the American Supreme Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes who in 1919 pointed out, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

What actually constitutes the political and social equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theatre has been the matter of fierce debate. Politicians and policy makers have, over the years, cited a whole host of harms as reasons to curtail speech — threat to national security, incitement to violence, promotion of blasphemy, the undermining of morality or the spread of slander or libel. Milton himself opposed the extension of free speech to Catholics on the grounds that the Catholic Church was the biggest obstacle to the extension of freedom and liberty.

Yet, however hypocritical liberal arguments may sometimes have seemed, and notwithstanding the fact that most free speech advocates accepted that the line had to be drawn somewhere, there was nevertheless an acceptance that speech was an inherent good, the fullest extension of which was a necessary condition for the elucidation of truth, the expression of moral autonomy, the maintenance of social progress and the development of other liberties. Restrictions on free speech were seen as the exception rather than the norm.

It is this idea of speech as intrinsically good that has been transformed. Today, in liberal eyes, free speech is as likely to be seen as a threat to liberty as its shield. “Speech is not free,” as the lawyer Simon Lee put it in his book The Cost of Free Speech, written in the wake of the Rushdie affair. “It is costly.” By its very nature, many argue, speech damages basic freedoms. Hate speech undermines the freedom to live free from fear. The giving of offence diminishes the freedom to have one’s beliefs and values recognised and respected.

In the post-Rushdie world, speech has come to be seen not as intrinsically good, but as inherently a problem, because it can offend as well as harm, and speech that offends can be as socially damaging as speech that harms. Speech, therefore, has to be restrained by custom, especially in a diverse society with a variety of deeply held views and beliefs, and censorship (and self-censorship) has to become the norm.

“Self-censorship,” as the philosopher Shabbir Akhtar put it at the height of the Rushdie affair, “is a meaningful demand in a world of varied and passionately held convictions. What Rushdie publishes about Islam is not just his business. It is everyone’s — not least every Muslim’s — business.” Increasingly, western liberals have come to agree.

Whatever may be right in principle, many now argue, in practice one must appease religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt. We live in a world, so the argument runs, in which there are deep-seated conflicts between cultures embodying different values, many of which are incommensurate, but all of which are valid in their own context. The controversy
over The Satanic Verses was one such conflict.

For such diverse societies to function and to be fair, we need to show respect for other peoples, cultures, and viewpoints. Social justice requires not just that individuals are treated as political equals, but also that their cultural beliefs are given equal recognition and respect. The avoidance of cultural pain has therefore come to be regarded as more important than what is often seen as an abstract right to freedom of expression.

As the British sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, “If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each other’s fundamental beliefs to criticism.” In a plural society, it is both inevitable and important that people offend others In fact, the lesson that we should draw from the Rushdie affair is the very opposite.

Critics of Rushdie no more spoke for the Muslim community than Rushdie himself did. Both represented different strands of opinion within Muslim communities. These days the radical, secular clamour, which found an echo in The Satanic Verses, has been reduced to a whisper. In the 1980s, however, it beat out a loud and distinctive rhythm within the Babel of British Islam. Rushdie’s critics spoke for some of the most conservative strands.

The campaign against The Satanic Verses was not to protect the Muslim communities from unconscionable attack from anti-Muslim bigots, but to protect their own privileged position within those communities from political attack from radical critics, to assert their right to be the true voice of Islam by denying legitimacy to such critics. They succeeded at least in part, because secular liberals embraced them as the authentic voice of the Muslim community.

Far from mutually limiting the extent to which we subject each other’s beliefs to criticism, we have to recognise that in a plural society it is both inevitable and important that people offend others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. And we should deal with those clashes in the open rather than suppress them. Important because any kind of social progress requires one to offend some deeply held sensibilities.

“If liberty means anything,” as George Orwell once put it, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” The trouble with multicultural censorship, and self-censorship, is not just that it silences dissenting voices. It is also that it often creates the very problems to which it is supposedly a response. Take the furore over The Jewel of Medina. Not a single Muslim had objected before Random House pulled the book. It is quite possible that none would have, had the publishers gone ahead as planned. But once Random House had made an issue of the book’s offensiveness, then it was inevitable that some Muslims at least would feel offended.

The problem was exacerbated by the actions of Denise Spellberg. Not only did she describe the novel as a “very ugly stupid piece of work” that amounted to “soft-core pornography”, she also went out of her way to draw attention to the book among sections of the Muslim community. In April, she informed Shahed Amanullah, a guest lecturer on one of her courses and an editor of a popular Muslim website, about a new book that “made fun of Muslims and their history”. Amanullah sent emails to various student forums claiming that he had “just got a frantic call from a professor who got an advance copy of the forthcoming novel Jewel of Medina — she said she found it incredibly offensive”. It was almost as if Spellberg was trying to incite a controversy.

Amanullah himself has insisted that The Jewel of Medina should not be withdrawn and has pointed out that “no one has the absolute right not to be offended, nor does anyone have the right to live without the uncomfortable opinions of others . . . we all need to develop thicker skins, more open minds, and a common understanding of the principles of free speech,” he suggested.

But by then the damage had already been done. ”I am disgusted by the inflammatory language Denise Spellberg used,” Sherry Jones told me. “If Random House had simply published my book, I don’t think there would have been any trouble. The real problem is not that Muslims are offended but that people think they will be. It is a veiled form of racism to assume that all Muslims would be offended and that an offended Muslim would be a violent Muslim.”

On Saturday 27 September, just weeks before Gibson Square was due to publish The Jewel of Medina in Britain, the publisher’s London headquarters were firebombed. By an eerie coincidence, the attack took place almost 20 years to the day The Satanic Verses had originally been published. Whether the perpetrators knew the significance of the date no one knows.

Nor is it possible to know whether such an attack would have happened had Random House simply gone ahead with publication without any fuss. There will always be extremists who respond as the Gibson Square firebombers did. There is little we can do about them. The real problem is that their actions are given a spurious legitimacy by liberals who proclaim it morally unacceptable to give offence and are terrified at the thought of doing so.

Shabbir Akhtar was right: what Salman Rushdie or Sherry Jones says is everybody’s business. It is everybody’s business to ensure that no one is deprived of their right to say what they wish, even if it is deemed by some to be offensive. If we want the pleasures of pluralism, we have to accept the pain of being offended. Twenty years on from the Rushdie affair, it is time we learnt this lesson.

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is the author of Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate (Weidenfeld/Reuters). His new book From Fatwa to Jihad is published in the spring by Atlantic Books.

The post Shadow of the fatwa appeared first on Index on Censorship.

In an extract from her new book in the Manifestos for the 21st Century series, author Kamila Shamsie explores the reasons why Islam has become synonymous with offence

There are moments in history when particular words seem to exert a magnetic field, drawing other words to them. In the early years of the present century, that magnetic field can be found around the word “Islam”,  pulling in a host of words of which the most thickly-clustered is “terror” and, hard on its heels, the word “offence”.

Living as I now do in London, where Muslims are a minority, though a significant one, it seems I can never go very far without running into the spectre of the offended Muslim. I ran into that spectre when asked to write this piece: two friends, independently of each other and neither of them Muslim, told me to “be careful”. And as they said the words I saw that spectre rise up before their eyes.

The more time I spend reading or hearing about this spectre from those who don’t live in the Muslim world, the more I am struck by the fact that, more often than not, the figure of the offended Muslim is merely partial. By “partial” I mean if you utter the words “Islam” and “offence” together, much of the non-Muslim world will doubtless think, “Danish cartoons … Satanic Verses … Teddy Bears named Mohammed … children’s stories with pigs as protagonists … women in skimpy clothes … bars and night-clubs”. In other words, offence is what happens when Muslims encounter the West.

Offence and Islam is a wide-ranging issue — I would go so far as to argue that it is primarily an intra-Muslim affair and only secondarily concerned with the non-Muslim world. And the manner in which offence is expressed varies almost as substantially as the causes of offence — from violent acts to tears shed in private, from parliamentary decrees to protest poetry.

One could ask, “why has the violently offended Muslim become such a prominent figure?” There are those who argue that Islam lends itself to violence, but this point of view entirely ignores the fact that the entwining of Islam, violence and offence has not existed in an unbroken thread through the centuries, but has become significant in very recent history.

To understand this entwining it’s necessary to step away from the partial viewpoint that regards offence through an Islam v the West prism. We cannot hope to understand any part of the diffuse and diverse Muslim world if we fail to take into account the internal history of different sects, groups, nations that has allowed the hardliners to grow in strength and put their stamp on the most visible global face of Islam. So rather than viewing the matter of offence as one of Muslims v the West, it might cast some light if we recast it as hardliners v anti-hardliners, a varied group that includes moderate Muslims, secularist Muslims, non-Muslims etc.

I remember quite clearly the first time the international figure of the offended Muslim acquired global significance. It was 1989: I was a teenager in Karachi with dreams of one day being a writer and a book called The Satanic Verses became the biggest news story of the day. With the exception of Turkey, every Muslim-majority nation — as well as several with large Muslim minorities — banned the novel on the grounds of its offensiveness to Islam.

The widespread banning of the novel certainly seemed to point to the fact that in the confrontation between freedom of expression and due respect for religion, an overwhelming majority of Muslims would come down in favour of the latter. But this confrontation and its outcome are not peculiar to Islam: in any religion where the word “blasphemy” exists there is a point beyond which freedom of expression becomes transgression. The confrontation and its outcome are far less significant than the particular nature of the response to transgression. The fact that so many believing Muslims were offended by The Satanic Verses — or rather by what they were told was written about Mohammed in the book — can pass almost without comment.

It is easy to see why anyone from the outside viewing the protests, the banning of the book, the calls for violence from Muslims in different parts of the world, would think they were viewing a monolith of the offended Muslim ranged against the freedoms of the West. But from where I was sitting, in Karachi, I remember the one question that had me transfixed: why are the British burning copies of this book? Even at 16 I could entirely understand the reasons for reactions in Pakistan being what they were, but what was going on in Britain? It was entirely baffling.

Years later, I saw the bafflement of my 16-year-old self reflected in my Pakistani compatriots when I returned to Karachi from London after the 7/7 bombings on the London Underground in 2005 to questions of, “What’s going on with these British Muslims? What does Britain do to these people?” While the British press was stressing the religion of the bombers, Pakistanis saw the root cause in the nation. “Sure, we have our own suicide bombers, but at least we know, broadly speaking, who they are, where they come from and why they’re doing it,” more than one Pakistani said to me. “These boys from Yorkshire just don’t make sense.”

The Bradford book burners didn’t make sense to me either because the fact that someone is Muslim has never been in itself an indicator or explanation of anything. I was living in a country that was 98 per cent Muslim which made for great heterogeneity, ranging from militant jihadis to whirling dervishes and to don’t-fast, don’t-pray, don’t-abstain-from-alcohol-or-premarital-sex but-of-course-I’m-a-believer Muslims. “Muslim” was a word that contained within it so many colours that it was itself without hue. The only way to prevent it from appearing as a blinding whiteness, revealing nothing, was to place it against some kind of defining context.

What I see is often frustrating, horrifying, maddening — but never baffling. The only thing that is baffling is expert commentators from outside the Muslim world who continue to quote the Quran and Hadith (sayings of the prophet) in explanation of Muslim reactions to offence rather than recognising the plurality of interpretation within the Islamic tradition and asking, more pertinently, why at a precise collision of history and geography certain forms of interpretations should be privileged over others, or gain ascendance in political, though not necessarily numerical terms, often in contravention of historical trends in that region. And why do the most damaging forms of interpretation currently co-exist at so many points of geographic and historic collision?

Anyone who doubts that there are widely varying forms of interpretation within Islam has clearly never watched Aalim Online a popular television show in Pakistan, where scholars from different sects debate religious questions. All the scholars proffer Quranic verses and Hadith in defence of their own positions and often end up with radically contrasting views. And yes, the position on the punishment for blasphemy and the authority necessary to make judgments about blasphemy does vary considerably among scholars.

This is an edited extract taken from the book Offence: the Muslim Case, from the Manifestos for the 21st Century series edited by Ursula Owen and Judith Vidal-Hall and published by Seagull Books

The post Kamila Shamsie: Islam and offence appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Kenan Malik, author, From Fatwa to Jihad: the Salman Rushdie affair and its legacy (Atlantic Books: 2009)
Tariq Modood MBE, professor of sociology, Bristol University; director, University Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship.

Claire Fox will then chair a panel debating the issues and the audience will also have their say in what promises to be a lively discussion.

Respondents include:

Stephen Law, Provost, Centre for Inquiry London
Amol Rajan, reporter at the Independent
Jo Glanville, editor, Index on Censorship
Maheila Malik, Reader in Law at King’s College London
Inayat Bunglawala, Muslim Council of Britain

This debate is presented by Institute of Ideas and Bishopsgate Institute, in association with Index on Censorship.

Tickets are £7 (£5 Concs.)

To book, please phone the booking line on 020 7392 9220 between 9.30am and 5.30pm, Monday to Friday.

Thursday, February 12, 2009, 7pm — 9pm

Bishopsgate Institute
230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH
London

The post Event: Twenty years of free speech wars appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post Editor’s pick 2008: Kenan Malik appeared first on Index on Censorship.

In common with many other writers, my reaction was immediate, and totally in opposition to the acts of prudence, the shillyshallying, indeed to the conciliatory –– not to say collaborationist –– declarations of the majority of political and religious leaders on the planet. It was instinctive and unconditional solidarity, with no fault and no debate, with the novelist whom they determined to kill.

And that was because I felt, then, that something essential was under threat, amongst all the confusion, the uproar, the cries of the assassins: a man’s life, of course; the right of a novelist to be free to write fiction, naturally; but also, and perhaps above all, a seismic shift, an unanswerable landslip, a definitive and fatal turning point in the course of 20th century
history.

Twenty years later my feelings remain unchanged.

Salman is today a little more at ease, almost free (I say ‘almost’… I say ‘a little’… because I know, even if he has the elegance to live as though it was nothing, that a suspended, or interrupted, fatwa that has never actually been annulled remains a fatwa and continues to weigh like an unlifted threat), but the feelings that I had then have been confirmed and honed with the years.

The Satanic Verses affair or, more precisely, the global reaction to the novel’s condemnation, the embarrassed declarations on the one hand, the gestures of appeasement on the other –– the declaration, for example, of the French president at the time, condemning the fatwa of course but not without also condemning in the same breath the ‘provocation’ which brought it about –– initiated a series of retreats which would be repeated at intervals over the course of the next two decades; the two latest examples being the affair surrounding the non-publication [by Random House in the US] of Sherry Jones’s novel and the more serious affair of the cartoons of Mohammed that were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. These are different circumstances. And there is no straightforward analogy with Salman Rushdie. But, particularly in the case of the cartoons, it is the same fear. The same reaction infected those mainstream newspapers, which are in principle free but which, with rare exceptions, took great care not to align themselves with their vilified colleague. The same capitulation [that we see in France] to those groups, in this case Islamist extremists, who demand that their religious laws be substituted for the laws of the Republic.

A diminishing of freedom of expression. The failure of the principle under which freedom of speech suffers no exceptions other than those that the civil courts of a democratic society may, if they are called upon, pronounce. In France, the weekly satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo [which printed the Danish cartoons --- translator’s note] was the only publication to salvage
our honour.

The affair marked a turning away from the ideal of tolerance that is central to our notion of democracy. Tolerance, until the fatwa, was the principal according to which the voice of the majority acceded to the claims of the minority and conceded public spaces for minorities to express themselves. Since the fatwa, an almost imperceptible series of shifts of meaning now grants any minority the right to express sentiments that are the actual negation of the democratic spirit and that threaten the dignity, even the lives, of men and particularly of women.

Thus, in Amsterdam, we were witness to the notion that the opinions that armed the murderer of
the film maker Theo Van Gogh must be tolerated to the same degree as the ‘provocative’ views of Van Gogh himself. Thus, in Paris, we witnessed the idea that the feelings of Islamist leaders who felt offended by Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s apostasy are no less admissable than those of the former member of parliament who insists on the indefeasible right, for every man and woman, to choose to be a member of, or to cease to be a member of, a religion. And thus, everywhere, we see this idea of tolerance brandished like a banner by all those who insist on judging by the same standards those cultures where women are seen as a different species, where they are perceived and treated as disturbing elements whose bodies and faces must be hidden.

Multiculturalism. Differentialism. Moral relativism and, should the occasion arise, assassin. That is the other legacy of the Rushdie affair.

The affair marked a real retreat from what we used to call — and, thank heavens, still do call in Europe and the United States –– the spirit of the Enlightenment. What does it mean, the Enlightenment? It is the right to believe, or not to believe. It is the right of the unbeliever to mock others’ beliefs. It is the right to blaspheme, in other words, which was a real victory of the philosophical spirit of Voltaire and which was eventually imposed, not without pain and drama and convulsions, on Jewish and Christian monotheism; and which, in the wake of the Rushdie affair, is once more being called into question from within Islam, by those who murmur, insinuate and sometimes yell: ‘Freedom of opinion, all right; the right not to believe, all right; but only on condition that that is expressed quietly, without any fuss or noise and without it being perceived in any way as offensive by the community that does believe; on condition that the very idea of God should not be insulted or sullied by the unbeliever.’ I won’t dwell on the feeble notion of God entertained by those who think that a novelist or a cartoonist or a God-doubter might have the power to sully it. I’ll pass over the fact that the true caricaturists of the prophet, those who insult him most deeply and who disfigure his noble message, are those who make him the
figurehead of their urge to commit murder and ethnic cleansing. The truth is that a world where we no longer have the right to laugh at dogma would be an impoverished world. The truth is that a world where we are not permitted to write fiction on any and every subject would be a much sadder place where whole areas of freedom will cave in. Dark times. The darkening of the
spirit. The spirit of the times.

The ayatollahs are not the first to burn books and murder writers. The fascists did it before them. Fascists of all kinds. Such attacks on the integrity of the spirit have almost always been an early warning sign of the imminent worsening of the prevailing order. Which is a way of suggesting that the Rushdie affair was also perhaps an early sign. Of suggesting that it too had
the same purpose, to sound the death knell of the old world. And perhaps it is one of the dates, if not the actual date, which marked the appearance in broad daylight of this new variation of fascism that I have named ‘fascislamism’. There was 11 September and its three blows … the death of [Ahmad Shah] Massoud, the prologue … the martyrdom of Daniel Pearl, a little later … the mass murders in Algeria, earlier … the persecution of women, everywhere … the slow but steady awakening of the spirit of the Muslim Brotherhood, in the only part of the world where one might have thought it possible to effect a true denazification … the first part of the sequence, the fundamental moment of the revival, of the real beginning of this terrible history and the point at which an entire wing of Islam entered an era of darkness, was without the slightest doubt the death sentence passed on a writer found guilty of causing offence to the word of the Quran.

What a strange adventure, for an enchanter of letters to have become the emblem of a dark moment in the history of literature and ideas.

Translated by Natasha Lehrer

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