Ayaan Hirsi Ali & the cause of Enlightenment (Timothy Garton Ash)
Timothy Garton Ash (who first made his reputation writing about Eastern Europe during the period of Soviet domination and the revolutions of 1989) on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch Member of Parliament, feminist activist, and secularist former Muslim.
--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
The Guardian
Thursday December 1, 2005
Comment
Blair must show leadership in the battle for free expression
Ayaan Hirsi Ali risks her life for free speech. Will this government risk losing a few votes for the same cause?
Timothy Garton Ash
People are trying to kill her just for saying what she thinks. Last year, he was actually killed simply because he made a provocative work of art. Welcome to our brave new Europe, three centuries after the Enlightenment.
She is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian-Dutch politician and writer, who wrote the script for the film Submission. He was Theo van Gogh, the Dutch director of that film, who as a result was murdered on an Amsterdam street just over a year ago. After slitting Van Gogh's throat, the murderer pinned a letter to his chest with a butcher's knife. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali," it said, "you will break yourself to pieces on Islam." "You, oh Europe, will go down ... " this rant concluded, "you, oh Netherlands, will go down ... You, oh Hirsi Ali, will go down."
Last week I had a conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and caught a glimpse of what it's like to live with a 24-hour top-security guard, under permanent threat of death for exercising your right of free expression. Our conversation was preceded by the first public showing in Britain of Submission. It's a deliberately shocking short film, and not, I think, a particularly good one. (You can judge for yourself by viewing it on the internet at ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/log/2292608 - it takes only 11 minutes.) However, I have not a shadow of a doubt that Ali's script is trying to make an important point about the suffering of women oppressed in the name of Islam - suffering that Ali knows at first hand both from her own experience and from acting as an interpreter for other women from Muslim backgrounds in the Netherlands.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is much more than just a voice for the voiceless oppressed. In person, she is a thoughtful, calm, clear, almost pedantic spokeswoman for the fundamental liberal values of the Enlightenment: individual rights, free speech, equality before the law. At dinner afterwards, she told me how these liberal individualist ideals were first quickened in her by reading English literature as a schoolgirl in Kenya, where her family had fled from Somalia. She loved the work of Charles Dickens and George Orwell. (As a young Muslim girl, she briefly thought the horrible behaviour of the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm helped explain why Muslims don't eat pork.) Then, studying political science in the Netherlands, she discovered the classics of western liberalism. Two authors she particularly admires are John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper.
I find her critique of multiculturalism, in the name of Enlightenment liberalism, too sweeping. In my view, her support for the French ban on the hijab in schools and public offices amounts to advocating an unnecessary restriction of individual liberty in the name of individual liberty. But her central claim seems to me vital and irrefutable: if being a free country means anything at all, it must mean that people have the chance to criticise freely, and without fear of reprisal, Islam, Hinduism or Sikhism, as they now in practice have the chance to excoriate Christianity (despite Britain's ridiculous blasphemy laws), Judaism or, for that matter, Darwinism. To establish that claim, she is determined to go ahead and make Submission 2, which will treat the story from the men's side, and Submission 3, which will suggest a possible response from Allah. Whatever the merits of the resulting films, we must salute her courage and support her in every way we can. It's not just the rights of women from Muslim families she is fighting for; it's a basic right for us all.
This right to free speech, which is to an open society what oxygen is to human life, is under direct threat from people whose position is very simple: if you say that, we will kill you. And not just in the case of Islam. Remember that violent protests and death threats from extremists in Britain's Sikh community forced the playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti into hiding, and her play Behzti off the stage in Birmingham.
How does our government react? By extending police protection to threatened individuals, to be sure, as it did for Salman Rushdie. By making the right noises about tolerance, peaceful protest and free speech. But also - shamefully, stupidly, cravenly - by itself proposing to restrict that right, in an ill-considered, ill-drafted bill to bar "incitement to religious hatred". Among the motives behind the reintroduction of this already once rejected bill in Labour's last election manifesto were appeasement of some self-appointed spokespersons of the Muslim community in Britain and transparent political opportunism - as the distinguished human-rights lawyer and Liberal Democrat peer Anthony Lester observes in an excellent book prepared by English PEN (Free Expression is No Offence, edited by Lisa Appignanesi); he says that the bill was introduced as "a targeted bid to woo British Muslim support for New Labour in marginal constituencies where hostility to the illegal invasion of Iraq had alienated many Muslim and other potential voters from Labour to the Liberal Democrats".
The bill has now been radically amended by the House of Lords. These amendments, in the formulation of which Lester played a significant part, do three things to make a bad bill somewhat less bad. They confine the offence to genuinely "threatening", rather than merely "abusive" or "insulting", words or behaviour. They require that the prosecution proves clear intent to stir up religious hatred. Above all, they introduce a "protection of freedom of expression" clause that reads: "Nothing in this part shall be read or given effect in a way that prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system."
It would be better for everyone concerned not to have this bloody bill at all, but I guess we can just about live with a law containing that rather splendidly worded safeguard. The question is, can the government? Negotiations continue. We may have the answer before Christmas.
Now here's what Tony Blair, the home secretary, the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet need to do. First, they should go back and read the magnificent pages in which John Stuart Mill explains why what he calls the "collision of opinions" is vital to the preservation of liberty, and why it is "obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining" attacks on either religion or what he calls "infidelity". (I know they are very busy people, so here's the exact reference: pages 58 to 61 in the Oxford World Classics edition of On Liberty. Private secretaries please photocopy and include in tomorrow's red boxes.) Then they should reflect on the example of a brave Somalian woman who, inspired by authors such as Mill, is risking her life every day to maintain our right to free speech. Then they should summon up the courage to risk just a little possible unpopularity from a small part of the electorate, and take forward the bill as amended. Is that too much to ask?
www.freeworldweb.net
Last week I had a conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and caught a glimpse of what it's like to live with a 24-hour top-security guard, under permanent threat of death for exercising your right of free expression. Our conversation was preceded by the first public showing in Britain of Submission. It's a deliberately shocking short film, and not, I think, a particularly good one. [This seems excessively harsh to me. --JW] (You can judge for yourself by viewing it on the internet at ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/log/2292608 [JW: or here]- it takes only 11 minutes.) However, I have not a shadow of a doubt that Ali's script is trying to make an important point about the suffering of women oppressed in the name of Islam - suffering that Ali knows at first hand both from her own experience and from acting as an interpreter for other women from Muslim backgrounds in the Netherlands.Timothy Garton Ash's central point, that the "right to free speeech ... is to an open society what oxygen is to human life," strikes me as important and indisputable. (You can read the rest below.)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is much more than just a voice for the voiceless oppressed. In person, she is a thoughtful, calm, clear, almost pedantic spokeswoman for the fundamental liberal values of the Enlightenment: individual rights, free speech, equality before the law. At dinner afterwards, she told me how these liberal individualist ideals were first quickened in her by reading English literature as a schoolgirl in Kenya, where her family had fled from Somalia. She loved the work of Charles Dickens and George Orwell. (As a young Muslim girl, she briefly thought the horrible behaviour of the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm helped explain why Muslims don't eat pork.) Then, studying political science in the Netherlands, she discovered the classics of western liberalism. Two authors she particularly admires are John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper.
I find her critique of multiculturalism, in the name of Enlightenment liberalism, too sweeping. In my view, her support for the French ban on the hijab in schools and public offices amounts to advocating an unnecessary restriction of individual liberty in the name of individual liberty. But her central claim seems to me vital and irrefutable: if being a free country means anything at all, it must mean that people have the chance to criticise freely, and without fear of reprisal, Islam, Hinduism or Sikhism, as they now in practice have the chance to excoriate Christianity (despite Britain's ridiculous blasphemy laws), Judaism or, for that matter, Darwinism. To establish that claim, she is determined to go ahead and make Submission 2, which will treat the story from the men's side, and Submission 3, which will suggest a possible response from Allah. Whatever the merits of the resulting films, we must salute her courage and support her in every way we can. It's not just the rights of women from Muslim families she is fighting for; it's a basic right for us all.
This right to free speech, which is to an open society what oxygen is to human life, is under direct threat from people whose position is very simple: if you say that, we will kill you. And not just in the case of Islam. Remember that violent protests and death threats from extremists in Britain's Sikh community forced the playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti into hiding, and her play Behzti off the stage in Birmingham.
--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
The Guardian
Thursday December 1, 2005
Comment
Blair must show leadership in the battle for free expression
Ayaan Hirsi Ali risks her life for free speech. Will this government risk losing a few votes for the same cause?
Timothy Garton Ash
People are trying to kill her just for saying what she thinks. Last year, he was actually killed simply because he made a provocative work of art. Welcome to our brave new Europe, three centuries after the Enlightenment.
She is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian-Dutch politician and writer, who wrote the script for the film Submission. He was Theo van Gogh, the Dutch director of that film, who as a result was murdered on an Amsterdam street just over a year ago. After slitting Van Gogh's throat, the murderer pinned a letter to his chest with a butcher's knife. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali," it said, "you will break yourself to pieces on Islam." "You, oh Europe, will go down ... " this rant concluded, "you, oh Netherlands, will go down ... You, oh Hirsi Ali, will go down."
Last week I had a conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and caught a glimpse of what it's like to live with a 24-hour top-security guard, under permanent threat of death for exercising your right of free expression. Our conversation was preceded by the first public showing in Britain of Submission. It's a deliberately shocking short film, and not, I think, a particularly good one. (You can judge for yourself by viewing it on the internet at ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/log/2292608 - it takes only 11 minutes.) However, I have not a shadow of a doubt that Ali's script is trying to make an important point about the suffering of women oppressed in the name of Islam - suffering that Ali knows at first hand both from her own experience and from acting as an interpreter for other women from Muslim backgrounds in the Netherlands.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is much more than just a voice for the voiceless oppressed. In person, she is a thoughtful, calm, clear, almost pedantic spokeswoman for the fundamental liberal values of the Enlightenment: individual rights, free speech, equality before the law. At dinner afterwards, she told me how these liberal individualist ideals were first quickened in her by reading English literature as a schoolgirl in Kenya, where her family had fled from Somalia. She loved the work of Charles Dickens and George Orwell. (As a young Muslim girl, she briefly thought the horrible behaviour of the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm helped explain why Muslims don't eat pork.) Then, studying political science in the Netherlands, she discovered the classics of western liberalism. Two authors she particularly admires are John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper.
I find her critique of multiculturalism, in the name of Enlightenment liberalism, too sweeping. In my view, her support for the French ban on the hijab in schools and public offices amounts to advocating an unnecessary restriction of individual liberty in the name of individual liberty. But her central claim seems to me vital and irrefutable: if being a free country means anything at all, it must mean that people have the chance to criticise freely, and without fear of reprisal, Islam, Hinduism or Sikhism, as they now in practice have the chance to excoriate Christianity (despite Britain's ridiculous blasphemy laws), Judaism or, for that matter, Darwinism. To establish that claim, she is determined to go ahead and make Submission 2, which will treat the story from the men's side, and Submission 3, which will suggest a possible response from Allah. Whatever the merits of the resulting films, we must salute her courage and support her in every way we can. It's not just the rights of women from Muslim families she is fighting for; it's a basic right for us all.
This right to free speech, which is to an open society what oxygen is to human life, is under direct threat from people whose position is very simple: if you say that, we will kill you. And not just in the case of Islam. Remember that violent protests and death threats from extremists in Britain's Sikh community forced the playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti into hiding, and her play Behzti off the stage in Birmingham.
How does our government react? By extending police protection to threatened individuals, to be sure, as it did for Salman Rushdie. By making the right noises about tolerance, peaceful protest and free speech. But also - shamefully, stupidly, cravenly - by itself proposing to restrict that right, in an ill-considered, ill-drafted bill to bar "incitement to religious hatred". Among the motives behind the reintroduction of this already once rejected bill in Labour's last election manifesto were appeasement of some self-appointed spokespersons of the Muslim community in Britain and transparent political opportunism - as the distinguished human-rights lawyer and Liberal Democrat peer Anthony Lester observes in an excellent book prepared by English PEN (Free Expression is No Offence, edited by Lisa Appignanesi); he says that the bill was introduced as "a targeted bid to woo British Muslim support for New Labour in marginal constituencies where hostility to the illegal invasion of Iraq had alienated many Muslim and other potential voters from Labour to the Liberal Democrats".
The bill has now been radically amended by the House of Lords. These amendments, in the formulation of which Lester played a significant part, do three things to make a bad bill somewhat less bad. They confine the offence to genuinely "threatening", rather than merely "abusive" or "insulting", words or behaviour. They require that the prosecution proves clear intent to stir up religious hatred. Above all, they introduce a "protection of freedom of expression" clause that reads: "Nothing in this part shall be read or given effect in a way that prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system."
It would be better for everyone concerned not to have this bloody bill at all, but I guess we can just about live with a law containing that rather splendidly worded safeguard. The question is, can the government? Negotiations continue. We may have the answer before Christmas.
Now here's what Tony Blair, the home secretary, the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet need to do. First, they should go back and read the magnificent pages in which John Stuart Mill explains why what he calls the "collision of opinions" is vital to the preservation of liberty, and why it is "obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining" attacks on either religion or what he calls "infidelity". (I know they are very busy people, so here's the exact reference: pages 58 to 61 in the Oxford World Classics edition of On Liberty. Private secretaries please photocopy and include in tomorrow's red boxes.) Then they should reflect on the example of a brave Somalian woman who, inspired by authors such as Mill, is risking her life every day to maintain our right to free speech. Then they should summon up the courage to risk just a little possible unpopularity from a small part of the electorate, and take forward the bill as amended. Is that too much to ask?
www.freeworldweb.net
posted by Jeff Weintraub at 8:35 AM
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