The Political Uses of Free Speech

The cartoons were first published in the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten,nearly five months ago, in September. The initial protest was limited to Denmark’sMuslim minority but was brushed off by both government and civil society. Thisis when some of the ultra- conservative Danish imams took matters into their ownhands and set off for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with a dossier containing theinflammatory cartoons. Last week came the diplomatic explosion: Saudi Arabiarecalled its ambassador in Denmark and Libya shut its embassy. There followedthe boycott of Danish goods, demonstrations, strikes, flag-burning, and nowfires set to embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

All this before the disclosure that a Danish illustrator had in April 2003submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection ofChrist to Jyllands-Posten, only to receive an email from the paper'sSunday editor: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoythe drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry.Therefore, I will not use them."

One wonders about the intensity of the protests. Especially since 9/11,Prophet Muhammad has been vilified in print by several public figures, fromReverend Franklin Graham -- son of Billy Graham and spiritual advisor toPresident, George W. Bush -- who has publicly called Islam "an evil andwicked religion" to Reverend Jerry Vines, past president of the SouthernBaptist Convention, who called Prophet Mohammed "a demon-possessedpedophile" during a keynote address. But none evoked the tide of publicprotest as have the cartoons.

When the paper at the centre of the controversy apologized on its websitebecause the cartoons had "indisputably offended many Muslims," theright-wing European press, outraged by this "caving in," took up thecause. Led by France Soir in Paris and Die Welt in Berlin, theybegan to re-print the cartoons, sometimes on the front page with the originalframe blown up. Other papers, including the left-leaning Der Tagesspiegelin Germany, joined. "It’s the core of our culture," Die Welt’seditor-in-chief told the British Guardian, "that the most sacredthings can be subjected to criticism, laughter and satire."

Everyone agrees that the cartoons are offensive, and not particularly becausethey portray the Prophet in human form. [After all, you can see such depictionsin both Ottoman Turkish and Persian miniatures, as well as in contemporaryIran.] At the heart of the offense is their message. One cartoon depicts theProphet wearing a turban which turns out to be a bomb with a lit fuse. Anotherhas him tell a queue of ragged suicide bombers: "Stop, stop, we’ve runout of virgins." The no-frills genre of the cartoon conveys the messagestarkly and without qualification: this is a terrorist and sexist religion.

Why do we not draw the conclusion that those who protest against theirProphet being depicted as a terrorist are in reality distancing themselves fromterrorism, in fact, demonstrating against it? I suppose because we realize thatthere is more to the demonstrations than just a vote for or against terrorism.That something more depends on the context of the demonstrations.

I wish to draw attention to two different contexts: Muslim-majority countriesand Europe. In both cases, the protests have an overwhelming local significance.

The demonstrations in Muslim-majority countries include a variety ofcontradictory forces. For one, in this period ushered in by Hamas’ astonishingelectoral victory, pro-American governments are anxious about Islamistmobilization and eager to preempt it. Rather than curb, they would wish to claimownership of the demonstrations. At the same time, those shut out of publiclife, extremist or not, realize they have found an issue on which they can calltheir governments to account without fear of facing direct repression; so theypress home their point that the War on Terror their governments have joinedunreservedly is at its core a war against Islam and Muslims. Here, then, is anissue which allows local civil society an opportunity to exercise freedom ofspeech to confront their own governments, alongside those of Europe.

In Europe, too, there is a local and an equally complex dimension to theprotests. The official American- British dissent from the governmental chorus inEurope neatly echoes the divide on the question of Turkey’s admission intoEurope. One is struck about how quickly the issue of free speech has folded intothat of civilization versus darkness. The shift has enormous significance forthe European debate. If the issue is one of free speech, there is no necessaryreason why Christian Europe should be seen to be a principled defender of freespeech, and Muslim Europe in disagreement in principle. But if the issue isrecast as one of enlightenment versus barbarism by Europeans, then surely thereis hardly a Muslim who would be in doubt as to which side of the contest he orshe is supposed to represent. For those looking for an apt analogy to understandthe significance of the cartoon controversy, it would not be an insensitivesatirizing of Jesus that devout Christians would find blasphemous, a religioustransgression, but an anti-Semitic hate cartoon that would alarm all decentpeople, secular or religious.

The group best placed to sense the gravity of this moment is that of EuropeanMuslims. More than anyone else, they must be acutely aware that the depiction ofProphet Muhammad as a terrorist and sexist goes beyond a general demonization ofMuslims to a direct assault on Muslims in Europe. Surely, even the mostassimilated must realize that the demand that they accept not just the principleof free speech but unconditionally support its every use as the price ofpolitical and social acceptance in Europe is a thinly disguised demand thatEuropean Muslims renounce their own freedoms and capitulate.

It is difficult to ignore the emerging European consensus that it is not justfreedom of speech, but Europe’s secular civilization, that is at stake. Itrecalls times when both left and right have portrayed empire as a necessarydefense of civilization, at first equated with Christianity and later humanrights.

Is there a way out of this confrontation, other than calling on Europeangovernments to ban the publication of cartoons? I fervently hope there is. Andthis brings me to the source of my current bafflement.

Every morning, as I read the paper or surf the internet, I anxiously look forsignificant European voices -- not from government but from the world of theintellect and the arts -- that would distance themselves from this particularattempt to promote Islamophobia as an exercise in free speech. I eagerly awaitsigns of a lively debate within European civil society, one that will break thecurrent impasse with testimony that the intellectual and political children ofthose who fought fascism in Europe have not lost the ability to recognize andthe courage to fight hate speech in a different form. I eagerly wait for them toexercise their freedom of speech.

For now, unfortunately, free speech is being used on both sides of thiscontroversy, on the one hand as a license for hate speech, and on the other as away to trigger a broader contest that would echo a ‘clash of civilizations.’If there are passionate defenders of free speech on both sides, there are alsothose who recognize that this issue has the potential of driving a broaderpolitical agenda. It is time the defenders of free speech pay attention to thelatter effect. The exercise of free speech has never come free of consequences,for one and all. This is why every society defines that which is offensive whichyou may have a legal right to say, but will morally refrain from saying; butshould you not, then it should not be surprising that it offends most decentpeople.

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government Columbia Universityand author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. Courtesy, Portside