Here my column in Sunday’s Washington Post on the increasing prosecutions in the West for insulting religion. The rise of international blasphemy prosecutions (and the proposal of the international criminalization of blasphemy) has sacrificed free speech in the name of free exercise.
For years, the Western world has listened aghast to stories out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations of citizens being imprisoned or executed for questioning or offending Islam. Even the most seemingly minor infractions elicit draconian punishments. Late last year, two Afghan journalists were sentenced to prison for blasphemy because they translated the Koran into a Farsi dialect that Afghans can read. In Jordan, a poet was arrested for incorporating Koranic verses into his work. And last week, an Egyptian court banned a magazine for running a similar poem.
But now an equally troubling trend is developing in the West. Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The “Free World,” it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.
Among the new blasphemers is legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot, who was convicted last June of “inciting religious hatred” for a letter she wrote in 2006 to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, saying that Muslims were ruining France. It was her fourth criminal citation for expressing intolerant views of Muslims and homosexuals. Other Western countries, including Canada and Britain, are also cracking down on religious critics.
Emblematic of the assault is the effort to pass an international ban on religious defamation supported by United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. Brockmann is a suspended Roman Catholic priest who served as Nicaragua’s foreign minister in the 1980s under the Sandinista regime, the socialist government that had a penchant for crushing civil liberties before it was tossed out of power in 1990. Since then, Brockmann has literally embraced such free-speech-loving figures as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he wrapped in a bear hug at the U.N. last year.
The U.N. resolution, which has been introduced for the past couple of years, is backed by countries such as Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive nations when it comes to the free exercise of religion. Blasphemers there are frequently executed. Most recently, the government arrested author Hamoud Bin Saleh simply for writing about his conversion to Christianity.
While it hasn’t gone so far as to support the U.N. resolution, the West is prosecuting “religious hatred” cases under anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws. British citizens can be arrested and prosecuted under the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which makes it a crime to “abuse” religion. In 2008, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for holding up a sign reading “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult” outside the organization’s London headquarters. Earlier this year, the British police issued a public warning that insulting Scientology would now be treated as a crime.
No question, the subjects of such prosecutions are often anti-religious — especially anti-Muslim — and intolerant. Consider far-right Austrian legislator Susanne Winter. She recently denounced Mohammad as a pedophile for his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha, which was consummated when she was 9. Winter also suggested that Muslim men should commit bestiality rather than have sex with children. Under an Austrian law criminalizing “degradation of religious doctrines,” the 51-year-old politician was sentenced in January to a fine of 24,000 euros ($31,000) and a three-month suspended prison term.
But it is the speech, not the speaker, that’s at issue. As insulting and misinformed as views like Winter’s may be, free speech is not limited to non-offensive subjects. The purpose of free speech is to be able to challenge widely held views.
Yet there is a stream of cases similar to Winter’s coming out of various countries:
In May 2008, Dutch prosecutors arrested cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot for insulting Christians and Muslims with a cartoon that caricatured a Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist as zombies who meet at an anti-gay rally and want to marry.
Last September, Italian prosecutors launched an investigation of comedian Sabina Guzzanti for joking about Pope Benedict VXI. “In 20 years, [he] will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons, and very active ones,” she said at a rally.
In February, Rowan Laxton, an aide to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, was arrested for “inciting religious hatred” when, watching news reports of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza while exercising at his gym, he allegedly shouted obscenities about Israelis and Jews at the television.
Also in February, Britain barred controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders from entry because of his film “Fitna,” which describes the Koran as a “fascist” book and Islam as a violent religion. Wilders was declared a “threat to public policy, public security or public health.”
And in India, authorities arrested the editor and publisher of the newspaper the Statesman for running an article by British journalist Johann Hari in which he wrote, “I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a ‘Prophet’ who at the age of 53 had sex with a 9-year-old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him.” In India, it is a crime to “outrage religious feelings.”
History has shown that once governments begin to police speech, they find ever more of it to combat. Countries such as Canada, England and France have prosecuted speakers and journalists for criticizing homosexuals and other groups. It’s the ultimate irony: free speech curtailed for the sake of a pluralistic society.
Even countries that the United States has helped liberate have joined the assault on free speech, rejecting the core values of our First Amendment. Afghan journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh was sentenced to death under Sharia law last year just for downloading Internet material on the role of women in Islamic societies that authorities judged to be blasphemous. The provincial deputy attorney general, Hafizullah Khaliqyar, has been quoted as saying: “Journalists are supporting Kambakhsh. I will arrest any journalist trying to support him after this.”
Not only does this trend threaten free speech, freedom of association and a free press, it even undermines free exercise of religion. Challenging the beliefs of other faiths can be part of that exercise. Countries such as Saudi Arabia don’t prosecute blasphemers to protect the exercise of all religions but to protect one religion.
Religious orthodoxy has always lived in tension with free speech. Yet Western ideals are based on the premise that free speech contains its own protection: Good speech ultimately prevails over bad. There’s no blasphemy among free nations, only orthodoxy and those who seek to challenge it.
After years of international scorn, the United States can claim the high ground by supporting the right of all to speak openly about religion. Otherwise, free speech in the West could die with hope of little more than a requiem Mass.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
Washington Post Sunday, April 12, 2009
Finally, I value Buddha’s post, not all but most. Sometimes I think you are a conservative just waiting to be hatched. Needless to say, at times buddha you display flashes of true brilliance. In fact, even when I don’t agree with you or your fellow bloggers you give many something to ponder. At times you come on just a wee bit too strong buddha, that’s why you raise the ire of some bloggers. Remember though religion like our government is not a Democracy, nor a Republic. Happy Easter all!
Troll bait,
It’s not the size of the stick, it’s how you use the pointed end. Unlike your use of your pointed end to keep your head firmly up your ass, I know how to use my tools.
I have no confusion, sport. Saudi Arabia is our enemy and the UK, France and the UN have shown a great willingness to bend over for Sharia and Saudis.
Freedom to Insult goes right along with Freedom of Speech, asshat, just like the Freedom to Ignore. You don’t like it? Then you don’t understand the nature of the right itself. Just because you call your chosen God X, you can curtail mine or other’s freedoms because it “offends” you? Not hardly. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
If you don’t like my tone or my words, you can also go screw yourself. Or you could be an adult and ignore it. Freedom of Speech comes at a price. The risk of being offended is part and parcel of that price. If your God of Choice doesn’t like it, tell him to call me. I’ll be glad to tell him/her/it to stuff it too. If he/she/it had wanted me to be silent I would have been born deaf, mute and have no fingers to type with. You a god? No? Didn’t think so. So why the arrogance to think you can speak for a god? What this narrows down to is YOU don’t like what I say. Tough shit, that. Exercise your freedom to ignore me if you don’t like it, but you want to silence me instead? You think the secular civil law of the U.S. should bend over for Sharia? Those are fighting words of the highest caliber. Your insistence that someone’s religion gives them trump rights to my civil rights are certainly fighting words. Keep your God to yourself and there won’t be a fight. How about that? But I suppose that solution is just too simple and pragmatic for a zealot. That’s aggression. I fight defensively. It’s my training as a martial artist and my philosophical beliefs about aggression. But fight I will for my rights. If you want the government to silence me to keep you from being offended, good luck on that. If you personally want to silence me, you better bring a lot of help and just go ahead and plan on killing me. As long as I draw breath I’ll say whatever I damn well please. If any of this offends you or hurts your feelings, I don’t care.
Welcome to Freedom of Speech.
Tell us again how Islam deserves special treatment that allows them to be aggressive and repressive to my civil rights and liberty. Then tell us why We the People should allow grown men to marry children. Or that women shouldn’t be allowed to dress a certain way or vote or drive or hold jobs. Or that when rape occurs it’s appropriate to punish the victim. Or that those who refuse to follow Mohamed should be killed for their apostasy. Because that is the next step in your logic if were avoiding offense – adopting Sharia wholesale. The provocation is yours, Fundie. You may see the word “secular” and find it offensive, but our secular government was set up that way on purpose and with much forethought to the historical abuses of religion and religious organizations. Aggression begets aggression, causal agitator, and religion has almost always been used by men to justify killing other men. That’s aggression. A justification rolled up into one little black book being misused by myopic and mentally defective men wanting to kill and steal in the name of God – a concept that by definition is beyond human understanding. Oh yeah, that’s divine alright. Divinely stupid. Most certainly it is not the proper use of religion which is to enlighten and better all our lives. That is what the core of ALL religion is about and would be only about absent the Earthly manipulation of men trying to dominate others instead of lifting them up. Moderates of all religion know this is true. But that’s not enough for your type, is it? You want to pee on your territory like a dog, not help others like a real man does. Then you want to hide behind the skirts of your belief. Your aggression is advocating that my rights be abridged so you avoid your offense. Any aggression on my part is defensive. You attack my rights by insisting I adopt your religious practice even in part. I’ll fight to the death to defend the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, be it under attack from Islam (or any religion) or by corrupt members of our own government. But if you don’t like what I say, that’d be your problem, sport.
As you will quickly realize if you continue to read buddha’s post’s are that he “speaks loudly and carries a small stick”.
Some of the British examples aren’t, er, strictly accurate.
The boy who was arrested by over-zealous police for displaying a placard reading “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult” was an example of police inventing law, not of the law itself. As the Crown Prosecution Service said when the case was referred to them, “In consultation with the City of London police, we were asked whether the sign, which read ‘Scientology is not a religion it is a dangerous cult’, was abusive or insulting. Our advice is that it is not abusive or insulting and there is no offensiveness, as opposed to criticism, neither in the idea expressed nor in the mode of expression. No action will be taken against the individual.” See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/23/religion . The underlying problem may be that elements of the London police are just a little too close to Scientology.
Again, Rowan Laxton was arrested after (allegedly) shouting “fucking Israelis, fucking Jews” and that Israelis should be “wiped off the face of the earth” in a crowded room in spite of remonstrances to pipe down. In American terms, that’s fighting talk, and it doesn’t have much to do with either freedom of speech or freedom of religion.
The distinction between freedom of speech and freedom to insult and provoke is real; note the aggressive and violent tone of Buddha-is-Laughing’s confusion above.
JT,
Wonderful and necessary column. The problem with abridging speech always comes down to the perspective of the particular censor. In almost all instances the subsitution of what particular people consider to be societal norms, for one’s right to express an opinion, ends badly for all. Galileo anyone?
Great column.
Seamus, “And still, I have to spend this afternoon filling plastic eggs with jelly beans and little Power-Ranger dudes, because my wife, the atheist, insists.”
That’s not religion, that’s sexual politics and merchandising. To which we are all slaves- differences being only in the matter of degree 😉 Even I bought the better-half an Easter treat and I too am atheist. 😉
I’ve never met a slippery slope I didn’t like 😉 so why stop there Bob? There are manifestly a wealth of imbeciles all around us, even occupying positions of responsibility and high status. I say we round them all up, sterilize them and turn them into subsistence workers; to pick our crops, tend our lawns, nanny our kids, do our janitor work etc. They could be kept in groups and rented out by the day or week. Maybe even set it up so the rest of us could lease one (or more) for long term in exchange for an agreement to house and feed them in lieu of actually paying them. Yea’ that’s the ticket! And the benefit wouldn’t end there. It would probably depress the number of illegal aliens coming here to do those jobs and put a big dent in that ‘problem’.
I assume Bob, that your comment was a bit of learned snark for Seamus and I’m just piling on. On the other hand I’m willing to argue the point 😉
Seamus:
“It’s become too easy to breed. As a species we are certainly getting dumber.”
Seamus,
Buck v. Bell is still good law.
Mr. Justice HOLMES:
“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 , 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” BUCK v. BELL, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=274&invol=200
Liberal values are under attack in Europe as well. God help us. I’ve been worried about the state of affairs over there (not to mention here) for a while. In Europe, Christian and Muslim conservatives seem so pissed, and liberal politicians seem so spineless. Liberalism is truly getting hit from all sides: from conservatives who use government to quash dissent and to protect small minds from impure speech, and from liberals who, in the interest of fighting intolerance, tolerate fascism. On the other hand, I was heartened to hear a story on Iraqi refugees in Sweden yesterday on NPR. In a country with one of the highest percentages of atheists/agnostics, it seems that refugees from the Arab world will find a warm welcome and be grateful for a new life of peace.
Article: “Consider far-right Austrian legislator Susanne Winter. She recently denounced Mohammad as a pedophile for his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha, which was consummated when she was 9. …
But it is the speech, not the speaker, that’s at issue. As insulting and misinformed as views like Winter’s may be, free speech is not limited to non-offensive subjects …”
I must respectfully disagree: in what enlightened country or culture would having sex with 9 year old children not be considered child sexual abuse? That it’s allowed under the color of religion does not change the nature of the act as one of victimization of the child. There is a difference between child sexual abuse and pedophilia, granted, but the effect I’m sure is lost on the 9 year old.
That Ms. Winter is on the far right of the political spectrum doesn’t make this particular statement more than technically misinformed; would the insult have been less if she had said Mohammad was a child sexual abuser even if that statement would have been more technically appropriate? The insult may have been her suggestion to engage in bestiality rather than child abuse.
Article: (Ms.Winter) “…the 51-year-old politician was sentenced in January to a fine of 24,000 euros ($31,000) and a three-month suspended prison term.”
In any event, I do agree that the propensity of government to criminalize and punish speech is a dangerous trend and is indicative of a degradation of civil and human rights.
It’s become too easy to breed. As a species we are certainly getting dumber. Fuck religeon. There’s not really a Hogwarts’s Academy either.
And still, I have to spend this afternoon filling plastic eggs with jelly beans and little Power-Ranger dudes, because my wife, the atheist, insists.
Ditto to what BIL said.
Budda,
You better make sure that the tree that you are going to cut down is not protected or that fertilizer or the lumber industry does not complain or that tree hugger is not present when you are discussing that right.
Also make sure that it is your’s to cut down or to dispose of some other way. Putting salt on your side of the property line is an effective solution, but that takes long range stragety.
I can only answer the Free Speech dilemma this presents for me personally, but I suspect mine is not a unique viewpoint on this subject.
Anyone attempting to silence me on any topic let alone religion has zero chance absent a compelling logic based argument and it’d better be pretty damn compelling. Violence or attempts at violence will only make me fight harder and dirtier. The only time I will self-censure is when I feel an ethical obligation to do so (e.g. I would not purposefully hurt a child’s feelings). No legal sanction or religious restriction or any other criteria will stop me if I feel strongly that something needs to be said.
Ridiculous laws deserve to be broken. You listening, UK? France? The U.N.?
Your solution to an intolerant religious practice is to quash MY human rights?
Well screw that and screw you.
You don’t like what I have to say? Don’t listen. The corollary to Free Speech is the Freedom to Ignore. Grow the Hell up. This means you too, Islamic Fundamentalists. And your Christian, Jewish and Hindu Fundamentalists counterparts as well. And any other thin skinned jackasses who wants to impose their religious belief as superior over human rights – mine or anyone else’s.
In the mean time, I’ll be sitting under this tree with my good friend and mentor Mr. Jefferson. We’ll be discussing the best way to cut down a diseased tree.
Wait wait.
did I not read that the courts are upholding people right to curse? So if you curse and use it in the name of religion, Does that make it protected speech? Or do you still need a condom?
So what do you do when a religion is intolerant of another religion?
I guess you ban em all.
That’s a great column Jonathan. I’m glad you did not shirk from citing some of the most hateful, ignorant speech that would offend any thinking person. Yet, you forcefully made the point that it is speech, not the speaker that is worthy of our protection. Ending with examples of the abuses which naturally follow from the restriction of speech helps people understand why this protection is so important. Religion has been wielded like a club to repress women, children,men, sexuality, thought and speech. It is central to every major society. If it is not open to question then that society is not free. Great job!