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Respect is a two-way street

There is a whiff of hypocrisy among some Muslims who, in the name of
being spared offence, want to censor other people's opinions

By Peter Tatchell

The Guardian - Comment Is Free – 25 October 2006

 http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_tatchell/2006/10/muslim_hypocrisy_on_free_speec.html


Monday
night’s Channel Four studio debate, Muslims and Free Speech,
exemplified the double-standards of some Muslim leaders. They object
to people offending their religious sensibilities, but happily cause
offence to others whenever it suits them.

Taji Mustafa, of the right-wing Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT),
failed to make any differentiation between criticisms and insults. He
seemed to suggest that any criticism of Islam is an insult and that
all such insults are unacceptable: “What Muslims will not accept…(is)
gratuitous insults about their beliefs, their faith or anything dear
to them,” he said. Such sweeping exclusions appear to leave little
room for a genuinely free exchange of ideas.

HuT’s intolerance is not surprising, but its hypocrisy in
breathtaking. While Mustafa rejects criticisms of Islam that he finds
insulting, his organisation has a long history of deliberately
insulting Jews: “Jews are a people of slander…a treacherous people,”
according to one HuT leaflet.

Moreover, Mustafa’s organisation used to openly call for the killing
of gay people and some of its members have made death threats against
me personally.

HuT’s constitution is an agenda for clerical fascism. But this makes
bad PR, so HuT recently removed the constitution from its website. I
archived a copy before it was deleted. You can see why they wanted it
removed from public view. It is jam packed with opinions that most
people would find deeply offensive. But they don’t care about causing
offence because they believe that it is their god-given right to
offend non-believers.

The HuT constitution calls for the creation of a theocratic
dictatorship, where non-Islamic political parties are banned and where
the only law is “divine law.” It stipulates the execution of Muslims
who turn away from their faith. It demands that women must obey their
husbands and that women should be debarred from ruling positions in
society.

Such views are an insult to women. But HuT would scream blue murder if
anyone dared demand that its right to be sexist should be restricted
in any way.

HuT is, of course, on the radical fringe of Muslim opinion, and cannot
be taken as representative of Muslims as a whole. So, what about
mainstream Muslim attitudes?

Even the supposed Muslim moderates on last night’s programme exuded a
whiff of hypocrisy. Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain
(MCB) claimed: “We do not wish to impose our way of life on anybody.
All we want is to live in respect with one another.” Fine sentiments.
Shame about the reality.

Where is the MCB’s respect for other people when it denounces
homosexuals as “repugnant” and “immoral”? Isn’t this language wilfully
offensive? Moreover, the MCB does want to impose its beliefs on
others. It has worked hand-in-glove with Christian fundamentalists to
support homophobic discrimination and to resist every gay law reform
of the last decade. The MCB fought to maintain discriminatory laws
like the unequal age of consent and Section 28, and it opposed civil
partnerships and protection for gays against discrimination in the
workplace. It has agitated to impose its homophobic policies on the
rest of society by attempting to maintain homophobia as the law of the
land.

None of this would matter much if the attitudes of Mustafa and Mogra
towards free speech were marginal. Unfortunately, not so. They appear
to be representative of the majority of British Muslim opinion on this
subject. According to an NOP poll for Channel Four’s Dispatches
special, What Muslims Want,
 http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/D/dispatches2006/muslim_survey/index.html#
which was broadcast in August, two-thirds of Muslims in Britain oppose
free speech if it offends their religious beliefs. They want to make
it a crime to cause them offence. People who insult Islam should, they
say, be arrested and prosecuted. In other words, they want privileged
legal protection against any criticism of their beliefs that they find
offensive. Their aim is to secure a legally-binding veto over what
other people, including other Muslims, are allowed to say about them
and their faith. Put simply: in the name of being spared offence, they
want to censor other people’s opinions. Moreover, they are not
demanding protection from offence for everyone – only for Islam and
other religions. In effect, they are seeking unique protection for
believers and their beliefs.

One big danger is that any restriction on freedom of speech in the
name of preventing offence is likely to be exploited by orthodox
Muslims to close down debate within their own community - to silence
dissenting liberal and progressive Muslim voices who raise
uncomfortable issues like domestic violence, forced marriages, child
abuse, honour killings, female genital mutilation and queer-bashing.

I have seen this happen. The suppression of critics within the Muslim
community is already excessive. Some Muslims have been accused of
insulting Islam because they have a non-traditional interpretation of
the Qur’an. These include adherents of minority Muslim sects like the
Ahmadiyya. They have experienced intimidating late night visits from
members of supposedly moderate Muslim organisations. Imams who
question misogyny and homophobia have been threatened with being
stripped of their qualifications and office. Others have faced threats
of expulsion from their mosques for deviating from the Muslim party
line. Some have had their children and elderly parents menaced. Muslim
reformers, like Irshad Manji, who advocate a modernist Islam for the
twenty-first century, live in fear of assassination by other Muslims.
Indeed, the MCB went out its way to expose Manji as a lesbian in a
seedy bid to discredit her ideas. In other words, Muslims who reject
free speech have already claimed their first victims and these victims
are fellow Muslims.

Some Muslim spokespeople on Monday night’s programme seemed to blur
any distinction between insults and violence, as if both were
equivalent and interchangeable. I accept that incitements to violence
against Muslims (or anyone else) are a step too far. They are against
the law and rightly so. Violence and threats of violence are inimical
to the free exchange of ideas. All communities have a right to live
without fear of violent attack.

Hence the OutRage! campaign against certain Jamaican reggae singers. I
did not oppose them because they are homophobic, but because they
advocate the murder of lesbians and gay men. I can put up with their
homophobic insults, but not with their public incitements to shoot,
burn, hang and drown queers. Black gay Jamaicans have a right to live
their lives without being bombarded with exhortations to kill them and
without the fear that they will be hacked to death by a homophobic
mob.

But sections of Muslim opinion (and their Christian and Judaist
fundamentalist counterparts) go much further. They want to outlaw the
giving of offence.

I would never wish to cause gratuitous offence to anyone, including
not to Muslims. We should all try to act in respectful and kindly ways
towards each other, recognising and respecting difference. However,
difference sometimes involves views that we find disagreeable and
offensive. In a democracy, we have a legitimate right to criticise
offensive opinions but not to ban them. Once you start banning views
where do you stop? Almost every opinion is offensive to someone. We’d
end up with no debate about anything.

So, while not aiming to cause offence, I cannot accept that Muslims,
or anyone else, should have a right to censor my opinions. This is not
because I regard my views as important or deserving of special
attention. It comes, in part, from experience.

I lived through the McCarthyite-style witch-hunts in my native
Australia in the 1960s. I nearly lost my job because I was labelled a
communist for opposing the US and Australian war against Vietnam. I
was told my views were offensive and unpatriotic – an insult to
Australian soldiers who were fighting and dying in the jungles of
Vietnam. I experienced firsthand the threat to personal freedom
involved in policing people’s thoughts and opinions. Ever since, I
have concluded that tolerating views that I might find offensive is an
essential aspect of a free and democratic society.

Indeed, I defend absolutely the right of Muslims to express their
views, even if they offend me and insult the heart of my being. That’s
democracy.

In January this year, the then leader of the MCB, Sir Iqbal Sacranie,
was questioned by the police after he insulted gay people, by
suggesting we are harmful, immoral and diseased. Although his views
are odious, because I believe in free speech, including the right to
give offence to me, I spoke out against Sir Iqbal being prosecuted.
All I am suggesting is that Muslim leaders and organisations extend
the same right to me and others.

For saying these things I will probably be denounced, yet again, as an
Islamophobe by members of the MCB, the Muslim Association of Britain
and the Islamic Human Rights Commission – and their “left-wing” allies
in the Socialist Workers Party, Respect and the Stop the War
Coalition. I have lost count of the number of times that I have heard
them say things like: “Peter Tatchell is a Muslim hater…he is working
for the BNP….he wants Muslims expelled from Britain”, and so on. It is
all complete nonsense but they keep repeating it in the hope that the
mud will stick.

For the record, I have never attacked Islam per se, or Muslims in
general. I have made a specific critique of Muslims who reject (or who
want to restrict) free speech.

Those who cry Islamophobe will no doubt accuse me of targeting “weak
and vulnerable Muslims.” Playing the victim card is, of course, no
substitute for rational argument. Besides, my targets are bigots and
censors – not Muslims.

Finally, let me conclude with some good news from the Channel Four NOP
poll. Despite the bullying and intimidation of some Muslim leaders and
organisations, one-third of British Muslims continue to support
freedom of speech - even when it causes them offence. They realise
that being able to speak freely is in the interests of Muslims too. It
gives them the right to speak out and say critical, challenging things
that Bush, Blair and Olmert, for example, may find offensive. It also
ensures that there can be an open debate within Muslim communities
about different understandings of their faith.

ENDS


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