Using free speech as a cloak for anti-Muslim

bigotry: Siddiqui
Free speech is not an unfettered right. It is circumscribed by laws of libel, hate and religious freedom as
well as self-restraint and public pressure.

Ma

ny of the world leaders who took part in the march in Paris last week to support
freedom of speech either muzzle free speech themselves or are close allies of regimes
that jail and torture those whose words they dont like, writes Haroon Siddiqui.
By: Haroon Siddiqui Columnist, Published on Wed Jan 14 2015

There can never be any justification for murdering provocateurs or innocents. Take
down their killers, if we must. Or round up the accomplices and throw the book at
them.
Thats a statement of the obvious after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the murder of
four Jews in Paris for no other reason than that they were Jews.

So is the observation that the current proclamations of fidelity to free speech are
riddled with ethical inconsistencies and reek of intellectual dishonesty.
Free speech is not an unfettered right, just as my right to swing my arm stops at your
nose.
Free speech is circumscribed by laws of libel, hate and religious freedom. Also by selfrestraint and public pressure, both reflective of our values.
We in the media and book publishing business routinely amend our words and axe
them outright when lawyers tell us that what weve written may risk lawsuits.
Most European nations adopted anti-hate laws post-Holocaust to curb anti-Semitism,
and rightly so. Frances is among the toughest.
France also limits free speech with strict defamation and privacy laws. In 1970, HaraKiri Hebdo, the precursor of Charlie Hebdo, was banned for mocking the death of
Charles de Gaulle. In 2006, the French Catholic Church won a lawsuit against a
fashion designer who depicted The Last Supper with semi-nude women instead of the
apostles.
Frances anti-terrorism law severely curtails digital and other freedoms. On Tuesday,
controversial comedian Dieudonn Mbala Mbala was arrested for defending
terrorism.
In 2006, Austria sentenced historian David Irving to three years for denying the
Holocaust, and jailed radical British Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri for inciting
hatred against non-Muslims.
That same year, the world mocked Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejads twisted
idea of free speech when he organized an anti-Semitic cartoon contest in Tehran.
While Stephen Harper killed the anti-hate section of the Canadian Human Rights Act,
he has retained the Criminal Code provision that prescribes up to two years in jail for
spreading hate. He is also proposing new restrictions on free speech, to ban the
glorification of terrorism and to insulate informants from public scrutiny.
Many of the world leaders who gathered in Paris last week in solidarity either muzzle
free speech themselves or are close allies of regimes that jail and torture those whose
words they dont like. Harpers two favourite governments, Ukraine and Egypt, have
the most journalists in jail at this time.

Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning have been hounded and
prosecuted for releasing accurate information. The Barack Obama administration has
declared war on journalists who reported leaked national security information.
The International Convention on Civil and Political Rights defends free speech but it
also requires states to prohibit any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatreds
that constitutes incitement to discrimination.
Besides the law, there is self-restraint.
International PEN, the leading advocate for free speech (with which Ive been
intimately involved), speaks in its charter of unhampered transmission of thought,
but also insists that since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members pledge
themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate
falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish daily that commissioned the Prophet Muhammad
cartoons in 2006, rejected caricatures of Christ a year earlier, saying they were
offensive and will provoke an outcry.
In 2008, Charlie Hebdo fired columnist/cartoonist Maurice Sinet, who suggested that
Jean Sarkozy, son of the then president, was converting to Judaism for money. The
editor who did the firing was Philippe Val , who had republished the Danish cartoons.
In the U.S., theres no legal limit on free speech but there is in practice. Post- 9/11 and
the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the media dished out embedded shock-and-awe jingoism,
not journalism suffocating timely critique of catastrophic foreign policy mistakes.
Critics of Israel are hounded, writes Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive Jewish
magazine Tikkun : Various universities denied tenure to professors who had made
statements critical of Israel. Hillel, which operates a chain of student-oriented Hillel
Houses on college campuses, decided to ban from their premises any Jews who were
part of Jewish Voices for Peace.
Last fall, the Metropolitan Opera cancelled plans to simulcast to Israel and theatres in
the U.S. its production of The Death of Klinghoffer , about the horrific murder of a
wheelchair-bound Jewish passenger on the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacked in 1985
by the PLO. Critics argued persuasively that the show may have been sanitizing
Palestinian terrorism.

Sony Pictures, maker of The Interview , had toned down the movie even prior to the
controversy about whether or not to show it.
Brendan Eich was fired as Mozillas chief executive because he once donated money to
a campaign to oppose same-sex marriage. Earlier, Blue Jays shortstop Yunel Escobar
was pummelled for sporting an eye-patch with the word maricon (faggot).
Life is full of inconsistencies, sure. But trumpeters of free speech cannot be ignorant of
all of the above. They are either exercising wilful blindness or arguing an abstract
principle with no relation to reality.
For many, free speech is a cloak for anti-Muslim bigotry or just juvenile bravado. We
cannot let them goad or bully us into deviating from a well-established norm: we must
abhor anti-Muslim cartoons for the same good reason that we cringe at anti-Semitic
nonsense or hateful caricatures of First Nations, blacks or gays.
We do so not to appease Muslims or Jews or others, or because we cower to
murderers, but because we proudly stand on guard for the core values of our civilized
polity.
Correction- Jan. 16, 2015: This article was edited from a previous version that
mistakenly said Britain had sentenced historian David Irving to three years for
denying the Holocaust. In fact he was sentenced by Austria.
More on Sunday. Haroon Siddiquis column appears on Thursday and
Sunday.hsiddiqui@thestar.ca
Posted by Thavam