Again huge hullabaloo is being raised for the right to freedom of speech ever since five bloggers disappeared from different cities of Pakistan. Earlier we have shown our deepest angst against the abuse of free speech by Charlie Hebdo, a French weekly magazine which published blasphemous material and was subsequently attacked for having given space to irreverent caricatures.
I cannot perceive how a speech in verbal or voiced form intended clearly to lacerate or provoke the otherwise calm sentiments of a class can be regarded a positive gesture of freedom of speech. I cannot understand how a person can be regarded a social activist for his mudslinging on a particular ideology. How can your ‘freedom’ allow you to go as far as making fun of certain ideals which do not conform to yours? That can at best be called a hate speech wrapped in free speech.
Your friends are of the opinion that Pakistan is already skidding nosedive when it comes to intellect and sagacity. They contend that the ones on social media were raising awareness to the spirit of question – the virtue that makes a society progressive. No doubt, instilling the sense of question intended solely to get enlightened is a positive gesture, but deriding a particular philosophy with an obvious intention to pique a community is by no means a service to the spirit of education or enlightenment.
I brooded a lot on how a man or a group of like-minded people may become activists by parodying the religion of the people who have history of not tolerating when it comes to the desecration of their beliefs.
One can be an atheist, and that is being irrespective of God and His ordains. But slinging arrows on Islam and God is by no means being an atheist, rather anti-Islam. Prima facie, it sounds you are unfailingly planning to target the sentiments of the Muslims, and that too being in a Muslim majority country. You are social sages as is being vociferously proclaimed. Doesn’t your sagacity advise you that given the ground realities in Pakistan, such a brazen impunity to unleash your anti-Islam version on social media might have serious boomerang? Doesn’t your wisdom teach you that freedom is never unlimited?
Freedom is not a plant whose wayward branches keep irritating and bruising the passers-by, rather it is the one that needs pruning every now and then so that it may not hurt the people around. This trimming maintains its comeliness. Freedom is never infinite – it has demarcated lines, nay, ought to have. It has certain principles and tenets that impose some fences around it. The constitution of every free nation on this globe imparts freedom to its citizens in many walks of life; but even that freedom, too, has certain limitations. These limitations and curbs, in fact, beautify the image of freedom without which freedom will grow out to be willfully menacing for the humanity, to say the least. You cannot mutilate the feelings of somebody or a group by naming your doing as freedom of speech or actions. Legal jurisdiction will come in to nab you for your so doing.
For example, the right to free speech is not unlimited in the United States, too. The US Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said in this context, “The most stringent protection would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing panic.” No doubt, the first amendment to the United States constitution provides, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” But the US Supreme Court has interpreted the guarantee of freedom of speech and press to provide no protection or only limited protection for some types of speech. For instance, the court has given verdict that the First Amendment provides no protection to obscenity and child pornography.
This philosophy is too simple and lucid – you can blurt out anything with liberty, but the ‘liberty’ never allows you the authority to hit somebody.
The countries which have voiced their concerns for the bloggers do have history on their lands where the free speech aimed to hit the sentiments of a community have had serious backlash. Some time ago, the Beatles were much sought-after rock band in the US, Europe and parts of Africa. When American teen magazine, Datebook, quoted John’s saying, “We are more popular than Jesus now”, flared-up violent protests broke out in America. The Beatles records were publically burnt, and their music was banned on radio. The angry protests spread to other countries like Mexico, South Africa and Spain. To counter the quote of John, a reporter Maureen Cleave came forward to say at the end of his report – “who says terrorism is limited to radical Islam?”
You cannot wield your right to free speech in many countries when it comes to denying ‘holocaust’ – which is termed as anti-Semitism and racism in many countries. Many people have faced trials for denying the mass murders of the Jews in the Second World War. British Historian David Irvin was declared guilty for questioning the holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced of three years prison. Then we have the tale of Dr. Fredrick Toben, an Australian scholar and educator. He had to spend seven months in prison for having disputed mass massacre of the Jews by the Nazis.
Flemming Rose is a person who published blasphemous cartoons in a Danish daily broadsheet newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, hurting the sentiments of the Muslims worldwide. But Jyllands Posten took a u-turn when Mr. Rose tried to publish holocaust denial cartoons simultaneously with the Iranian paper Hamshahri. The editor-in-chief Carsten Juste not only refused to publish the holocaust cartoons but also sent Mr. Rose on forced leave for some time.
Then we have an example of Azhar Ahmad who exercising his right to free speech posted on facebook, “all soldiers must die” following the death of six British soldiers in Afghanistan. Azhar, who lived in West Yorkshire, was charged with sending a grossly offensive communication. District Judge Jane Goodwin said that Azhar’s remarks were “derogatory, disrespectful and inflammatory”.
There ought not to be double standards. The west has fixed fences around freedom of speech when it comes to its emotions and feelings, and the one who transgresses is anti-Semitic, racist and disrespectful. But when somebody piques the feelings of a large community of the Muslims, its institutions come out with the placards for the unlimited and unchecked power to ‘freedom of speech’.
The strange dichotomy is that the same right to the freedom of speech was not endowed upon the Iranian president Ahmadinejad at Durban Review Conference, and the leaders of the progressive societies staged a walkout when he rose to speak.
I fear the world would continue to be unsafe unless we learn to respect the beliefs and creeds of other communities. Moreover, truth, rationalism, sprit to question and liberalism will cease to be the sublime traits if wrapped in hate, libels and innuendos.
The writer is a Lecturer English and can be reached at [email protected]