Tweet
COMMENT: NOTHING, HOWEVER VILE, JUSTIFIES CENSORSHIP
by Nick Cohen
The Observer (England)
September 16, 2012
The friends of freedom should not make exceptions because freedom's
enemies never do. Admittedly, the trailer for Innocence of Muslims (one
of its many titles) makes the temptation to allow just one exception
close to overwhelming. It advertises an amateur and adolescent piece of
religious propaganda that depicts Muhammad as a violent and lascivious
fool. Copts probably made it. As there is no great difference between
Christian and Islamist extremists, why not intervene in this clash
of fundamentalisms and stop one sect inciting another sect to violence?
Even before mobs attacked the US embassy in Cairo, its diplomats felt
the urge to abandon basic principles. "We firmly reject the actions
by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the
religious beliefs of others," they said. Hillary Clinton was hardly
more robust. "The United States deplores any intentional effort to
denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious
tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation." It was
a little too late in the day before she recalled America had other
commitments going back to its founding, and muttered for all that
America still does "not stop citizens from expressing their views,
no matter how distasteful".
European states, with all their counter-productive restrictions
on freedom of speech - and yes, thank you, I include laws against
Holocaust denial, denial of the Armenian genocide and all the other
prohibitions of hatred that litter the statute books - would find a
way to ban the film and arrest the film-makers. The British police
would use public order and breach of peace laws. The wistful tone
of the Obama administration make one suspect that it wished the US
constitution did not prevent it following suit
Innocence of Muslims is one of the hardest cases for liberals I've
come across. But even this tawdry piece of work raises problems for
the proponents of censorship. The first is a problem with language.
Mount a critique of Islamist religious fanaticism, and it is only a
matter of time before you find that defenders of religious reaction
have hijacked liberal language. You are an "orientalist", they say,
an "Islamophobe", "neo-colonialist" or "neocon". (The suffix "neo-"
has become a synonym for "evil". The reader need only see a "neo-"
to know that no good will follow.)
The joke of it is that defenders of censorship represent "orientalism"
at its most patronising. They see the world's Muslims as an
undifferentiated and infantile mass. The smallest provocation -
a cartoon in a Jutland newspaper, a trailer for a nasty but obscure
film - is enough to turn them into a raging mass of bearded men who
bellow curses as they fire their Kalashnikovs. They take no account
of those in Libya, Egypt and Iran who want nothing to do with clerical
violence. As seriously, they do not understand that "offences against
Islam" are manufactured by extremists, who must keep their supporters
in a state of violent rage or see their power wane.
The murder of US diplomats was not carried out spontaneously, but
by a jihadist militia that wanted to kill Americans on the 9/11
anniversary. In Egypt, the controversy over the Coptic film was
created by Al-Nas, a Salafi channel dedicated to promoting militant
Islam. These crises are political events, in other words. Their
promoters must create the poisonous atmosphere in which they thrive.
Does anyone doubt that if the Muhammad film had never been made,
they would not have found another target for their fury? Has everyone
forgotten that their targets have included men and women liberals
have a duty to defend? The same people who scream today, applauded
the murder of Salman Tasser for protesting against the execution of
Pakistani "blasphemers" who "insulted" Islam. They hoped for the
murder of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, because she tried to stand up for the
right of immigrant women to resist religious oppression in Europe.
Then of course there is the case of The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie
has chosen this week to publish his autobiography. I would have
said that the timing was perfect from his publisher's point of view,
except that so many other weeks would have revealed how the violence
caused by Ayatollah Khomeini's attempt to suppress The Satanic Verses
in 1989 and murder all those associated with it never passed. Readers
who were around at the time will remember that a desperate Rushdie
tried to appease his persecutors by issuing an abject apology. He
learned that there are forces you cannot appease, when the Islamists
laughed and carried on with the terror campaign. It is a lesson we
would do well to remember.
To bring the story up to date we now have before us the example of
Channel 4's documentary on the origins of Islam. It was everything
that the Muhammad trailer was not. Tom Holland presented a thoughtful
and balanced film on the arguments among historians about whether the
armies that exploded out of Arabia to conquer the Persian empire and
much of the Byzantine empire were Muslim, or whether Islam came later.
His documentary was public service television at its most scrupulous.
I speak from experience when I say that he has no hatred of religion.
The last time I met him was at a debate where he argued for and
I argued against a motion that religion was a force for good in
the world.
Nevertheless, Holland and Channel 4 had the integrity to break a taboo
more frightened broadcasters are too cowardly to challenge. They aired
doubts about Islam's founding myths, and the predictable fulminations
followed. The Ramadhan Foundation and Islamic Education and Research
Academy attacked them with dangerous abandon. Channel 4 had distorted
"our faith and history", they said. The programme was "prejudiced"
and "ignorant". Their denunciations are all over the web, and could
be picked up in Iran or Egypt or indeed Bradford or Birmingham and
used as an excuse to attack British interests. Does that possibility
mean Channel 4 should have suppressed the programme, and that Britain
should submit to a de facto blasphemy law?
Even in the hardest of cases, the old arguments against censorship
remain the best. The makers of Innocence of Muslims have reactionary
religious prejudices and probably reactionary racial prejudices too.
Reactionaries are not hard to beat in open debate. If you can't beat
them without calling for the cops or reaching for a gun, you should
get out of the debating business and make way for someone who can.
by Nick Cohen
The Observer (England)
September 16, 2012
The friends of freedom should not make exceptions because freedom's
enemies never do. Admittedly, the trailer for Innocence of Muslims (one
of its many titles) makes the temptation to allow just one exception
close to overwhelming. It advertises an amateur and adolescent piece of
religious propaganda that depicts Muhammad as a violent and lascivious
fool. Copts probably made it. As there is no great difference between
Christian and Islamist extremists, why not intervene in this clash
of fundamentalisms and stop one sect inciting another sect to violence?
Even before mobs attacked the US embassy in Cairo, its diplomats felt
the urge to abandon basic principles. "We firmly reject the actions
by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the
religious beliefs of others," they said. Hillary Clinton was hardly
more robust. "The United States deplores any intentional effort to
denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious
tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation." It was
a little too late in the day before she recalled America had other
commitments going back to its founding, and muttered for all that
America still does "not stop citizens from expressing their views,
no matter how distasteful".
European states, with all their counter-productive restrictions
on freedom of speech - and yes, thank you, I include laws against
Holocaust denial, denial of the Armenian genocide and all the other
prohibitions of hatred that litter the statute books - would find a
way to ban the film and arrest the film-makers. The British police
would use public order and breach of peace laws. The wistful tone
of the Obama administration make one suspect that it wished the US
constitution did not prevent it following suit
Innocence of Muslims is one of the hardest cases for liberals I've
come across. But even this tawdry piece of work raises problems for
the proponents of censorship. The first is a problem with language.
Mount a critique of Islamist religious fanaticism, and it is only a
matter of time before you find that defenders of religious reaction
have hijacked liberal language. You are an "orientalist", they say,
an "Islamophobe", "neo-colonialist" or "neocon". (The suffix "neo-"
has become a synonym for "evil". The reader need only see a "neo-"
to know that no good will follow.)
The joke of it is that defenders of censorship represent "orientalism"
at its most patronising. They see the world's Muslims as an
undifferentiated and infantile mass. The smallest provocation -
a cartoon in a Jutland newspaper, a trailer for a nasty but obscure
film - is enough to turn them into a raging mass of bearded men who
bellow curses as they fire their Kalashnikovs. They take no account
of those in Libya, Egypt and Iran who want nothing to do with clerical
violence. As seriously, they do not understand that "offences against
Islam" are manufactured by extremists, who must keep their supporters
in a state of violent rage or see their power wane.
The murder of US diplomats was not carried out spontaneously, but
by a jihadist militia that wanted to kill Americans on the 9/11
anniversary. In Egypt, the controversy over the Coptic film was
created by Al-Nas, a Salafi channel dedicated to promoting militant
Islam. These crises are political events, in other words. Their
promoters must create the poisonous atmosphere in which they thrive.
Does anyone doubt that if the Muhammad film had never been made,
they would not have found another target for their fury? Has everyone
forgotten that their targets have included men and women liberals
have a duty to defend? The same people who scream today, applauded
the murder of Salman Tasser for protesting against the execution of
Pakistani "blasphemers" who "insulted" Islam. They hoped for the
murder of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, because she tried to stand up for the
right of immigrant women to resist religious oppression in Europe.
Then of course there is the case of The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie
has chosen this week to publish his autobiography. I would have
said that the timing was perfect from his publisher's point of view,
except that so many other weeks would have revealed how the violence
caused by Ayatollah Khomeini's attempt to suppress The Satanic Verses
in 1989 and murder all those associated with it never passed. Readers
who were around at the time will remember that a desperate Rushdie
tried to appease his persecutors by issuing an abject apology. He
learned that there are forces you cannot appease, when the Islamists
laughed and carried on with the terror campaign. It is a lesson we
would do well to remember.
To bring the story up to date we now have before us the example of
Channel 4's documentary on the origins of Islam. It was everything
that the Muhammad trailer was not. Tom Holland presented a thoughtful
and balanced film on the arguments among historians about whether the
armies that exploded out of Arabia to conquer the Persian empire and
much of the Byzantine empire were Muslim, or whether Islam came later.
His documentary was public service television at its most scrupulous.
I speak from experience when I say that he has no hatred of religion.
The last time I met him was at a debate where he argued for and
I argued against a motion that religion was a force for good in
the world.
Nevertheless, Holland and Channel 4 had the integrity to break a taboo
more frightened broadcasters are too cowardly to challenge. They aired
doubts about Islam's founding myths, and the predictable fulminations
followed. The Ramadhan Foundation and Islamic Education and Research
Academy attacked them with dangerous abandon. Channel 4 had distorted
"our faith and history", they said. The programme was "prejudiced"
and "ignorant". Their denunciations are all over the web, and could
be picked up in Iran or Egypt or indeed Bradford or Birmingham and
used as an excuse to attack British interests. Does that possibility
mean Channel 4 should have suppressed the programme, and that Britain
should submit to a de facto blasphemy law?
Even in the hardest of cases, the old arguments against censorship
remain the best. The makers of Innocence of Muslims have reactionary
religious prejudices and probably reactionary racial prejudices too.
Reactionaries are not hard to beat in open debate. If you can't beat
them without calling for the cops or reaching for a gun, you should
get out of the debating business and make way for someone who can.