PAUL MARSHALL is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for
Religious Freedom. He has published widely in newspapers and magazines,
including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
the Washington Post, First Things, The New
Republic, and The Weekly Standard. He is the author or
editor of more than 20 books on religion and politics, including
Their Blood Cries Out, Religious Freedom in the World, and
Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion. Most recently he
is the co-author, with Nina Shea, of Silenced: How Apostasy and
Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide.
A growing threat to our freedom of speech is
the attempt to stifle religious discussion in the name of preventing
“defamation of” or “insults to” religion, especially Islam. Resulting
restrictions represent, in effect, a revival of blasphemy laws.
Few in the West were concerned with such laws
20 years ago. Even if still on some statute books, they were only of
historical interest. That began to change in 1989, when the late
Ayatollah Khomeini, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, declared it the duty of
every Muslim to kill British-based writer Salman Rushdie on the grounds
that his novel, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous. Rushdie
has survived by living his life in hiding. Others connected with the
book were not so fortunate: its Japanese translator was assassinated,
its Italian translator was stabbed, its Norwegian publisher was shot,
and 35 guests at a hotel hosting its Turkish publisher were burned to
death in an arson attack.
More recently, we have seen eruptions of
violence in reaction to Theo van Gogh’s and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s film
Submission, Danish and Swedish cartoons depicting Mohammed, the
speech at Regensburg by Pope Benedict XVI on the topic of faith, reason,
and religious violence, Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, and a false
Newsweek report that the U.S. military had desecrated Korans at
Guantanamo. A declaration by Terry Jones—a deservedly obscure Florida
pastor with a congregation of less than 50—that he would burn a Koran on
September 11, 2010, achieved a perfect media storm, combining American
publicity-seeking, Muslim outrage, and the demands of 24 hour news
coverage. It even drew the attention of President Obama and senior U.S.
military leaders. Dozens of people were murdered as a result.
Such violence in response to purported
religious insults is not simply spontaneous. It is also stoked and
channeled by governments for political purposes. And the objects and
victims of accusations of religious insults are not usually Westerners,
but minorities and dissidents in the Muslim world. As Nina Shea and I
show in our recent book Silenced, accusations of blasphemy or
insulting Islam are used systematically in much of that world to send
individuals to jail or to bring about intimidation through threats,
beatings, and killings.
The Danish cartoons of Mohammed were published
in Denmark’s largest newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September
2005. Some were reproduced by newspapers in Muslim countries in order to
criticize them. There was no violent response. Violence only erupted
after a December 2005 summit in Saudi Arabia of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference—now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The summit was convened to discuss sectarian violence and terrorism, but
seized on the cartoons and urged its member states to rouse opposition.
It was only in February 2006—five months after the cartoons were
published—that Muslims across Africa, Asia, and the Mideast set out from
Friday prayers for often violent demonstrations, killing over 200
people.
The highly controlled media in Egypt and
Jordan raised the cartoon issue so persistently that an astonishing 98
percent of Egyptians and 99 percent of Jordanians—knowing little else of
Denmark—had heard of them. Saudi Arabia and Egypt urged boycotts of
Danish products. Iran and Syria manipulated riots partly to deflect
attention from their nuclear projects. Turkey used the cartoons as
bargaining chips in negotiations with the U.S. over appointments to
NATO. Editors in Algeria, Jordan, India, and Yemen were arrested—and in
Syria, journalist Adel Mahfouz was charged with “insulting public
religious sentiment”—for suggesting a peaceful response to the
controversy. Lars Vilks’ later and more offensive 2007 Swedish cartoons
and Geert Wilders’ 2008 film Fitna led to comparatively little
outcry, demonstrating further that public reactions are
government-driven.
Repression based on charges of blasphemy and
apostasy, of course, goes far beyond the stories typically covered in
our media. Currently, millions of Baha’is and Ahmadis—followers of
religions or interpretations that arose after Islam—are condemned en
masse as insulters of Islam, and are subject to discriminatory laws and
attacks by mobs, vigilantes, and terrorists. The Baha’i leadership in
Iran is in prison, and there is no penalty in Iran for killing a Baha’i.
In Somalia, al Shebaab, an Islamist group that controls much of that
country, is systematically hunting down and killing Christians. In 2009,
after allegations that a Koran had been torn, a 1,000-strong mob with
Taliban links rampaged through Christian neighborhoods in Punjab,
Pakistan’s largest province, killing seven people, six of whom,
including two children, were burned alive. Pakistani police did not
intervene.
Throughout the Muslim world, Sunni, Shia, and
Sufi Muslims may be persecuted for differing from the version of Islam
promulgated by locally hegemonic religious authorities. Saudi Arabia
represses Shiites, especially Ismailis. Iran represses Sunnis and Sufis.
In Egypt, Shia leaders have been imprisoned and tortured.
In Afghanistan, Shia scholar Ali Mohaqeq
Nasab, editor of Haqooq-i-Zen magazine, was imprisoned by the
government for publishing “un-Islamic” articles that criticized stoning
as a punishment for adultery. Saudi democracy activists Ali al-Demaini,
Abdullah al-Hamed, and Matruk al-Faleh were imprisoned for using
“un-Islamic terminology,” such as “democracy” and “human rights,” when
calling for a written constitution. Saudi teacher Mohammed al-Harbi was
sentenced to 40 months in jail and 750 lashes for “mocking religion”
after discussing the Bible in class and making pro-Jewish remarks.
Egyptian Nobel prize winner in literature Naguib Mahfouz reluctantly
abandoned his lifelong resistance to censorship and sought permission
from the clerics of Al-Azhar University to publish his novel
Children of Gebelawi, hitherto banned for blasphemy. Mahfouz
subsequently lived under constant protection after being stabbed by a
young Islamist, leaving him partly paralyzed.
After Mohammed Younas Shaikh, a member of
Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, raised questions about Pakistan’s
policies in Kashmir, he was charged with having blasphemed in one of his
classes. In Bangladesh, Salahuddin Choudhury was imprisoned for hurting
“religious feelings” by advocating peaceful relations with Israel. In
Iran, Ayatollah Boroujerdi was imprisoned for arguing that “political
leadership by clergy” was contrary to Islam, and cleric Mohsen Kadivar
was imprisoned for “publishing untruths and disturbing public minds”
after writing Theories of the State in Shiite Jurisprudence,
which questioned the legal basis of Ayatollah Khomeini’s view of
government. Other charges brought against Iranians include “fighting
against God,” “dissension from religious dogma,” “insulting Islam,”
“propagation of spiritual liberalism,” “promoting pluralism,” and, my
favorite, “creating anxiety in the minds of … Iranian officials.”
Muslim reformers cannot escape being attacked
even in the West. In 2006, a group called Al-Munasirun li Rasul al Allah
emailed over 30 prominent reformers in the West, threatening to kill
them unless they repented. Among its targets was Egyptian Saad Eddin
Ibrahim, perhaps the best known human rights activist in the Arab world.
Another was Ahmad Subhy Mansour, an imam who was imprisoned and had to
flee Egypt, in part for his arguments against the death penalty for
apostasy. The targets were pronounced “guilty of apostasy, unbelief, and
denial of the Islamic established facts” and given three days to
“announce their repentance.” The message included their addresses and
the names of their spouses and children.
Mimount Bousakla, a Belgian senator and
daughter of Moroccan immigrants, was forced into hiding by threats of
“ritual slaughter” for her criticism of the treatment of women in Muslim
communities and of fundamentalist influences in Belgian mosques.
Turkish-born Ekin Deligoz, the first Muslim member of Germany’s
Parliament, received death threats and was placed under police
protection after she called for Muslim women to “take off the head
scarf.”
But the story gets worse. Western governments
have begun to give in to demands from the Saudi-based OIC and others for
controls on speech. In Austria, for instance, Elisabeth Sabbaditsch-Wolf
has been convicted of “denigrating religious beliefs” for her comments
about Mohammed during a seminar on radical Islam. Canada’s grossly
misnamed “human rights commissions” have hauled writers—including Mark
Steyn, who teaches as a distinguished fellow in journalism at Hillsdale
College—before tribunals to interrogate them about their writings on
Islam. And in Holland and Finland, respectively, politicians Geert
Wilders and Jussi Halla-aho have been prosecuted for their comments on
Islam in political speeches.
In America, the First Amendment still protects
against the criminalization of criticizing Islam. But we face at least
two threats still. The first is extra-legal intimidation of a kind
already endemic in the Muslim world and increasing in Europe. In 2009,
Yale University Press, in consultation with Yale University, removed all
illustrations of Mohammed from its book by Jytte Klausen on the Danish
cartoon crisis. It also removed Gustave Doré’s 19th-century illustration
of Mohammed in hell from Dante’s Inferno. Yale’s formal press
statement stressed the earlier refusal by American media outlets to show
the cartoons, and noted that their “republication…has repeatedly
resulted in violence around the world.”
Another publisher, Random House, rejected at
the last minute a historical romance novel about Mohammed’s wife,
Jewel of Medina, by American writer Sherry Jones. They did so to
protect “the safety of the author, employees of Random House,
booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and
sale of the novel.”
The comedy show South Park refused to
show an image of Mohammed in a bear suit, although it mocked figures
from other religions. In response, Molly Norris, a cartoonist for the
Seattle Weekly, suggested an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” She
quickly withdrew the suggestion and implied that she had been joking.
But after several death threats, including from Al-Qaeda, the FBI
advised her that she should go into hiding—which she has now done under
a new name.
In 2010, Zachary Chesser, a young convert to
Islam, pleaded guilty to threatening the creators of South Park.
And on October 3, 2011, approximately 800 newspapers refused to run a
“Non Sequitur” cartoon drawn by Wiley Miller that merely contained a
bucolic scene with the caption “Where’s Muhammad?”
Many in our media claim to be self-censoring
out of sensitivity to religious feelings, but that claim is repeatedly
undercut by their willingness to mock and criticize religions other than
Islam. As British comedian Ben Elton observed: “The BBC will let vicar
gags pass, but they would not let imam gags pass. They might pretend
that it’s, you know, something to do with their moral sensibilities, but
it isn’t. It’s because they’re scared.”
The second threat we face is the specter of
cooperation between our government and the OIC to shape speech about
Islam. A first indication of this came in President Obama’s Cairo speech
in 2009, when he declared that he has a responsibility to “fight against
negative stereotypes of Islam whenever they appear.” Then in July of
last year in Istanbul, Secretary of State Clinton co-chaired—with the
OIC—a “High-Level Meeting on Combating Religious Intolerance.” There,
Mrs. Clinton announced another conference with the OIC, this one in
Washington, to “exchange ideas” and discuss “implementation” measures
our government might take to combat negative stereotyping of Islam. This
would not restrict free speech, she said. But the mere fact of U.S.
government partnership with the OIC is troublesome. Certainly it sends a
dangerous signal, as suggested by the OIC’s Secretary-General,
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, when he commented in Istanbul that the Obama
administration stands “united” with the OIC on speech issues.
The OIC’s charter commits it “to combat
defamation of Islam.” Its current action plan calls for “deterrent
punishments” to counter “Islamophobia.” In 2009, an official OIC organ,
the “International Islamic Fiqh [Jurisprudence] Academy,” issued fatwas
calling for speech bans, including “international legislation,” to
protect “the interests and values of [Islamic] society.” The OIC does
not define what speech should be outlawed, but the repressive practices
of its leading member states speak for themselves.
The conference Secretary Clinton announced in
Istanbul was held in Washington on December 12-14, 2011, and was closed
to the public, with the “Chatham House Rule” restricting the
participants (this rule prohibits the identification of who says what,
although general content is not confidential). Presentations reportedly
focused on America’s deficiencies in its treatment of Muslims and
stressed that the U.S. has something to learn in this regard from the
other delegations—including Saudi Arabia, despite its ban on Christian
churches, its repression of its Shiite population, its textbooks
teaching that Jews should be killed, and the fact that it beheaded a
woman for sorcery on the opening day of the conference.
* * *
The encroachment of de facto blasphemy restrictions in the West
threatens free speech and the free exchange of ideas. Nor will it bring
social peace and harmony. As comedian Rowan Atkinson warns, such laws
produce “a veneer of tolerance concealing a snake pit of unaired and
unchallenged views.” Norway’s far-reaching restrictions on “hate speech”
did not prevent Anders Behring Breivik from slaughtering over 70 people
because of his antipathy to Islam: indeed, his writings suggest that he
engaged in violence because he believed that he could not otherwise be
heard.
In the Muslim world, such restrictions enable
Islamists to crush debate. After Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab,
was murdered early last year by his bodyguards for opposing blasphemy
laws, his daughter Sara observed: “This is a message to every liberal to
shut up or be shot.” Or in the words of Nasr Abu-Zayd, a Muslim scholar
driven out of Egypt: “Charges of apostasy and blasphemy are key weapons
in the fundamentalists’ arsenal, strategically employed to prevent
reform of Muslim societies, and instead confine the world’s Muslim
population to a bleak, colourless prison of socio-cultural and political
conformity.”
President Obama should put an end to
discussion of speech with the OIC. He should declare clearly that in
free societies, all views and all religions are subject to criticism and
contradiction. As the late Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, and head of Nahdlatul
Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organization, wrote in his foreword to
Silenced, blasphemy laws
. . . narrow the bounds of acceptable
discourse. . . not only about religion, but also about vast spheres of
life, literature, science, and culture in general. . . . Rather than
legally stifle criticism and debate—which will only encourage Muslim
fundamentalists in their efforts to impose a spiritually void, harsh,
and monolithic understanding of Islam upon all the world—Western
authorities should instead firmly defend freedom of expression. . . .
America’s Founders, who had broken with an old order that was rife with
religious persecution and warfare, forbade laws impeding free exercise
of religion, abridging freedom of speech, or infringing freedom of the
press. We today must do likewise.