Freedom of speech

Anyone who has followed this blog knows of my interest in the above topic. My book on the history of the subject is due out any day now. One of the events that precipitated the book was the so-called Mohammed cartoons protests. Today I came across the following article, "Nausea in Paris," on the interesting "Signandsight" website. The magazine Charlie Hebdo, one of the few publications to publish the cartoons when they first cause such a furor, has been attacked, this time for a special issue on "sharia law." (The picture above shows the publisher of Charlie Hebdo.) Read and take note of the pusillanimous reaction of Western reporters, especially Time's Paris correspondent Bruce Crumley. Pretty sad stuff.

I am not familiar with the author of the signandsight posting, Frederik Stjernfelt, but his point is well taken. It's not very brave for Western "intellectuals" to get in such a lather about protests by Catholics at some work of art of which they disapprove. When it comes to Muslims, however, the same intellectuals cannot disgrace themselves enough with their chatter about "cultural sensitivities."

Photo credit: Focus.de

Freedom of Speech

The volume on the historical origins of freedom of speech was inspired, so to speak, by the Mohammed cartoons protests of 2006. As I write the conclusion to the volume, Americans are protesting the construction of the "Ground Zero mosque." There are also Koran burnings. Time to weigh in on these issues.

In both cases -- the Muslims and the Americans -- people are exercising their right to voice their opinions. What is remarkable, however, is the asymmetry in the reaction of the West's intellectual class to the two protests. The Muslims: well, they are "offended," and we have to respect their sensibilities. The Americans: well, they are intolerant and racist and Islamophobic to boot.

The Indian-born British writer Kenan Malik asserts that the protests of Muslims, starting with the Rushdie affair, have been politically motivated by the most conservative elements in the Islamic world. Speaking of himself as a young man before the Rushdie affair, in the 1980s, Malik writes that "radical" in a Muslim context meant someone who was a militant secularist, who challenged the power of the mosques. The Rushdie affair, however, took place at a time when the left, disenchanted with secularism, began buying into the multicultural politics of ethnic particularism. The result has been the undermining of "progressive trends" within Muslim communities and the strengthening of the hand of religious fundamentalists.

He also blames journalists, who like to find the most extreme figure to quote. Thus, the fundamentalists have become the "real Muslims," in contrast to the vast numbers who have come to the West in order to live a better life and to escape from the fundamentalist politics that Middle Eastern rulers manipulate to keep themselves in power.

Such an assessment is what many of us have suspected. He doesn't go so far as to label the confrontation between the West and Islamic fundamentalism a continuation of the confrontation of world powers of the Cold War, though I think there is an element of that.

Such politics aside, what interests me is the reaction of Western intellectuals at this time. As I have said before, free speech is in crisis, precisely because the Western intellectual class is no longer is confident of its own principles. Should I say that they are pusillanimous? Since the 18th century progress has been defined by eroding the values that people most cherish, staring with religion. It was a sign of "open-mindedness" to be "tolerant" of attacks on one's pieties. Art -- painting, theater, movies, etc. -- has become a principle vehicle for spreading open-mindedness. When Catholics in New York protested in 1999 against paintings by Chris Ofili, freedom of speech was naturally invoked by the ACLU and others, and the exhibition went on.

As Kenan Malik points out, however, you cannot find a theater director in Europe today who would put on a performance of Voltaire's Mahomet. Random House, "publishing giant," backed out of publishing The Jewel of Medina, a romantic tale about Aisha, the Prophet's youngest wife. (By the way, it was a university professor who alerted Random House about the "offensive to Muslims" nature of the novel.) When a museum in Holland decides to remove an exhibition of photos of gay men wearing masks of Mohammed, the left-wing Dutch newspaper praises the museum for its "great professionalism." Imagine that response had the Brooklyn Museum canceled its exhibit of Chris Ofili's paintings!

One might think that intellectuals and the media have tied themselves in knots over free speech because they are uncomfortable with dissent. (See Rousseau's general will.) Maybe it is more the case that they are uncomfortable with dissent from their opinions. Ordinary Americans, however, are showing that freedom of speech isn't limited to the ruling class. (I love the superiority of this site, showing "the most ignorant Ground Zero mosque signs." Note that ignorance is not defined; it is simply assumed that the sentiments are signs of ignorance. Compare the signs with the picture above: I don't think Americans can be said to have a corner on "ignorance.")

(People have complimented me for the images on this blog. For the subject of freedom of speech, however, I have really been challenged, since the relevant images are generally so unattractive and don't fit with those on other postings. Thus, I chose here the opposite sentiment and the picture at the top by artist Nancy Glazier.)

Freedom Isn't Free

Goethe's reflections on the Middle East, in the "Noten und Abhandlungen," concern the "conditioning factors" for cultural and historical phenomena. In this focus Goethe tends toward Herder and away from the universalist view of mankind to be found in the works of the radical philosophes of the 18th century. The achievements of the human race do not spring complete from the minds of smart people; they are instead the results of the labor of generations.

This generational achievement was on my mind as I wrote the introduction to the volume on the history of the freedom of speech in the 18th century. Freedom of speech in the West, especially in the U.S., is facing some major challenges. The most visible challenge came in 2005 and 2006, in response to the publication of the so-called Mohammed cartoons in a Danish newspaper. "European" history (as distinct from the individual national histories) might be said to have been founded on the right of individuals to criticize authority, be it religious, civil, or even artistic. When Muslims instead demanded respect for their holy figure, the legitimacy of one of Europe's most ancient privileges -- the right of artists to caricature a sacred cow -- was under attack.

At the time of the controversy proponents of freedom of speech would revert to J.S. Mill's instrumental view, that tolerance of different views would lead to "truth," but this was countered by the relativists among us with the insistence on "competing truths." Likewise, to express a concern for "universal rights" invited the charge of being an "Enlightenment fundamentalist."

Thus, my approach in the free speech volume (tentatively entitled "Free Speech versus Well-Meant Speech") has been to cede the ground to multiculturalists. In a world of multiculturalism, our current liberal freedoms are the product of a distinctive culture, namely, "the West." While these freedoms and rights have been incorporated in law and in international declaration, in truth, even if the matter were not complicated by the different institutional histories of the nations of the West, one could not speak of "universal" rights. They are our rights, and we worked hard to achieve them.

That being said, I do believe that people desire in their heart of hearts to be free. For non-Western nations, however, the problem is the lack of institutional history. The institutions we have here, protecting life, liberty, property, and so on, were not created overnight. Voting is only one step; the freedoms themselves have to be fought for. Men and women in Iran are putting their lives on the line not just for a vision but for a reality. Clearly the woman at the top of this post has a vision of Iranian society that is different from that of the women in hijab waiting their turn to vote. Those differences have to be negotiated, and it will take time to do so. As we have learned, the Western "cultural product" cannot simply be imported beyond its natural constituency. There will be setbacks, as the Chinese learned 20 years ago at Tiananmen Square.

It is not our battle, but at the same time we need to voice our support for the protests in Iran and also to keep alive the memory of Tiananmen. The road is clear, but traveling it will not be easy.

Picture credit: The Big Picture