Understanding Freedom of Expression

One of the regular visitors to this blog has asked me a question that must also be in the minds of many others:

"I get stuck- when non-Muslims say that a cartoon is just a cartoon, and why are you taking it seriously. You can draw images of us and also of our gods.To them i reply that Islam teaches love and respect to all religions and prophets. But... they keep saying that draw our cartoons and we will publish them."

No, they will not. Ask them to read the laws regarding libel and patents that exist in their country. Unrestrained freedom of expression has neither been advocated nor found desirable anywhere in the world so far. There are always certain limits even in US. The issue is how to define those limits.

Here are a few examples:

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  Facebook itself deleted the official page of People's Resistance, a broad-based Pakistani group formed for a peaceful struggle for restoration of judiciary sometime ago. I am told that not only their page got deleted but they even received warnings from FB administration just because they had invited for an event involving protest in favor of judiciary in their own country. Read more on Teeth Maestro
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  When Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie was published, Pakistani filmmaker Shehzad Gul responded by making a film called International Guerillay that depicted Salman Rushdie in a negative manner. While Rushdie's book had been allowed to circulate in UK, the film was initially banned because Rushdie could have filed libel suite not only against the film producer but also against the British authorities! Read details on Wikipedia.
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  Recently, there were news about Megan Fox taking some legal action against an advertisement of baby milk that used just her first name "Megan" in a funny conversation (you can search it on the Internet).

So, the freedom of expression does not mean that everything goes. Now, it may be that most people in the West do not mind if their prophets and deities are mocked, so it has been allowed in their law. Many people in the East seem to mind that (and it's not just a Muslim thing: Christians sought ban on Da Vinci Code movie and Hindus protested against the exhibition of paintings by M F Husain disrespecting Hindu goddesses.

Why people in the West are more tolerant about ridiculing religion (when they are not equally tolerant about defamation of living citizens) than in the East may be because whenever a civilization is going down it shows these kinds of symptoms - it was the same with ancient Rome, the later Mughal Empire and so on. 

So, the bottom line is that while the contemporary Western societies seem to be in favor of protecting only their living citizens through laws against defamation, most Eastern societies today seem to be extending that cover to religious personalities long dead also. Again, this is not an essentially East-West thing: Western societies in their better days were also like this, for instance about 150 years ago when "the sun did not set on their empire"!

In this situation, what we all need to learn - the West as much as the East - is that in a world that has practically become a global village, one cannot go on behaving like the village idiot anymore. We need to show some ettiquettes.

Freedom of expression and genuine artists

So you think that a great poet or artist never compromises and pays very little attention to commercial considerations? Factual evidence suggests otherwise. Consider three of the greatest poets of all times.

With one possible exception, William Shakespeare wrote all his plays for the box office. In his own lifetime and for more than a century after his death, he was not as much recognized for being a masterful playwright as he was for being a successful one. His colleagues who compiled the authoritative collection of his plays after his death complied with the latest censorship policies: several expressions from Shakespeare's work were struck out and many of those have never reached us. Still, that has not prevented us from appreciating the genius of Shakespeare..  

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on the suggestion of his publisher, self-censored several words and phrases in his greatest masterpiece Faust ("very characteristically", accordng to the scholar Walter Kaufmann).

Almost all the greater Urdu poems of Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal were written with the aim of collecting money for orphanages and other philanthropic causes - yes, these include 'Tasveer-i-Dard',  'Shikwah', 'Jawab-i-Shikwah', 'Khizr-i-Rah' and 'Tulu-i-Islam'. Moreover, when certain portions of Iqbal's first Persian book were severely criticized by his audience, he happily deleted them from the next edition. His famous prayer was, "May my pen never hurt any heart...":

مری زبان قلم سے کسی کا دل نہ دُکھے

گلہ کسی سے نہ ہو زیرِ آسماں مجکو 

These artists used the feedback of their societies as reality check. We know what they - Shakespeare, Goethe and Iqbal - have offered to humanity. As compared to them, the other kind of artists who whine about freedom of expression and regard petty egoism to be more important than love, what have they offered? Please ask this question to yourself.

Also, if you have the time, do a simple exercise. Pick up the work of a typical "high culture" artist who claims to be oh so far above his or her society. Then scan the work for a single theme: hypocrite. I promise that you shall be amazed at what comes up (some examples can be offered on this blog if readers are interested).

Saying 'No' to Blasphemy

On June 1, 2006, the Christian community of Pakistan launched protests against the expected release of the Da Vinci Code in theatres in Pakistan. Four days later, the government banned the movie although the book and the DVD continued to be sold (see reports on IBN Live and BBC News). While announcing the ban, the Culture Minister Ghulam Jamal said that Islam taught respect for all prophets and disrespecting any of them was to disrespect all of them.

Perhaps there was a lesson to be learnt: Muslim clerics had actually encouraged the Christian community to take a stand against the movie that had offended many Christians around the world (at least seven states in India had also banned the film). When the protest was launched, it received active support from Muslim clerics and hence the prominent Pakistani Christian leader Shahbaz Bhatti said that it would go a long way to ensuring sectarian harmony (see Atlas Forum).

This incident stands apart from many others because it is about action and not just talk, talk and more talk. Something happened - something got done.

That is what Pakistan needs to do now: it should offer alternatives through practice and not just preaching. Not only Muslims but many sensible people from all religions are upset about the way the forces of ridicule and darkness have been smashing the bastions of respect for more than a hundred years now. Can we not come up with laws that respect the freedom of expression and encourage it but at the same time also prevent abuse of that freedom for creating dissension and spreading hatred?

We are free. We have a country. We own it - all of us Pakistanis. In our country, we can make any law we want. Let's not wait for Western countries to show us what laws need to be made. Let's lead the world by initiating such beautiful legislation in our own country that other peoples in the world, even in Western countries, feel inclined to follow it.

The world needs such laws and the nation founded by a barrister should be the most well-equipped to take the lead. For that we shall need to understand the issue at hand: freedom of speech. As correctly pointed out by two young readers of the previous post, Free speech doesn't mean that you start abusing and humiliating others. The challenge is to translate this idea into a philosophy that can then be turned into law. At least in Pakistan, it can be done.

یہاں ہر ایک شخص کا بلند تر مقام ہو

مٹیں دلوں سے نفرتیں، سبھی کا احترام ہو

اِس احترام کے لیے ہماری جنگ ایک ہے 

Note: The Urdu couplets mean, "Everyone should be venerated here, there should be no hatred in hearts and everybody respected - for the sake of that respect, our war is a common one."

The May 20 Thing

The hype about 'Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!' (check Wikipedia entry) may not be as much as it is presumed by some - despite the fact that a few big names of mainstream media have given coverage to this now-anyonymous call for drawing images of Prophet Muhammad and uploading them on the Internet on Saturday, May 20 (the act may be called "now-anonymous" because both the Seattle cartoonist to whom the idea is attributed as well as the person who started the Facebook page have backed out). Also, the original Facebook page calling for the event has been surpassed in popularity by pages demanding ban on it such as Against 'Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!'.

The other kind of response is exemplified by Honour the Prophet Muhammad Campaign page suggesting, "No boycott of facebook on May 20th, rather it will be a day of activity! posting hadiths, Quranic verses, videos, and whatever you can!" Apparently this page is associated with a 22 year old student from UAE, Sami Zaatari, who has also uploaded a video on YouTube called Draw Muhammad Day - the Muslim Response. The video has been subsequently copied on Pakistan Youth Forum channel on YouTube (from where it is embedded here, since the comments on this version are more relevant to the debate).

The video has also been copied on the home page of the Seattle cartoonist who originally called for the event - hence a "news update" caption on Zaatari's video announcing, "The artist who started who started draw Muhammad Day has joined this campaign!!!!". However, it may not be as much of a victory: since the whole idea behind "Everybody Draw" was to avoid becoming target of Muslim extremists, it is uderstandable if the originators renounce it once it has taken roots. Secondly, as highlighted in some of the comments on the YouTube video (PYF version), the issue is something else.

Dispelling some of the misconceptions about Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is a good thing but even if some non-Muslims become convinced that the Prophet was a great role model, the question will still remain whether like other good role models he can also be mocked or not. For instance, look at two of the comments posted on the Zaatari video on PYF channel:

He has the right to be mocked just like every single other thing on this Earth including Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Thor, Shiva, and all the other imaginary friends people have.

You seem intent upon missing the point. The issue isn't the Muhammed and his character. And it isn't that we're "haters" (although I'm sure there are a few out there.) No, this is an issue of FREE SPEECH. The whole point is that NO PERSON, NO IDEA, and NO IDEOLOGY has special privilege. EVERYTHING is open to scrutiny and criticism. Muslims have no right to expect their faith to be treated differently. It's time for Islam to quit whining and grow up.

This is the mood in which the so-called "Muslim Response" is being met. It seems that no matter how we handle the matter, we cannot avoid the central question: what is and what is not the freedom of speech. Perhaps a two-pronged Muslim response is needed. Firstly, there should be lawful protest against the May 20 event and such activities. Secondly, we need to probe deeper into the whole issue of the freedom of speech, and that is what I shall try to do on this blog in the next few days.

Arberry's Mistake

In his preface to the translation of Iqbal's Mysteries of Selflessness in 1953, the Cambridge scholar A. J. Arberry proposed a course of action for the Western academia which appeared very desirable on its face value:

If the threatening and so unnecessary conflict is to be avoided, it is imperative that we should make a renewed and unremitting effort to understand each other’s viewpoint, and to study what possibilities exist for, first, a diminishing of tension, next, a rational compromise, and, ultimately, an agreement to work together towards common ideals.

Who would not agree with such an idea? Arberry was asking to (a) understand each other's viewpoint; (b) study the possibilities for (i) diminishing of tension; (ii) rational compromise; and (iii) working together towards common ideals.

Unfortunately, before arriving on this proposition in the preface, Arberry practically demolished the entire intellectual premise on which the Muslim society was standing in those days, not only in Pakistan but also elsewhere. The premise was what I have tried to explain in some other posts as "Philosophy of Muslim Nationalism." Arberry discarded it rather hastily as an "apologist" reaction and considered it to be even a threat to world peace. According to him, Iqbal was a reactionary whose thought was not to taken seriously except as an example of typical mistakes made by bonafide representatives of modern Muslim thought.

Could this summary condemnation of the entire intellectual output of Islam in the preceding one hundred years be regarded a first step towards "a renewed and unremitting effort to understand each other’s viewpoint"? In what ways was Arberry helping his reader "to study what possibilities exist for... an agreement to work together towards common ideals?" Far from that, he had actually preached that no common ideals existed between Islam and the West in the first place.