WHEN THE constitutional convention gets round to discussing blasphemy, one of its few explicit remits, the likelihood is – rightly – that it will want to abolish it. And this week in Geneva the World Council of Churches (WCC), which groups the world’s major Protestant, Orthodox and Evangelical churches, urged Pakistan to abolish its blasphemy law which carries a possible death penalty.
Yet, as liberal democracies and even mainstream western churches move in that direction, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, one of the Muslim world’s most important representative bodies, has urged the international community to “come out of hiding from behind the excuse of freedom of expression” and make insults against religions an international criminal offence. The “deliberate, motivated and systematic abuse of this freedom” threaten global security and stability, he says.
And, given the events in Libya, Cairo and elsewhere in the last week, the “excuse of freedom of expression” notwithstanding, the temptation of pragmatists may very well be to ask why we should jeopardise peace and the lives of those who defend it by standing behind the rights of inflammatory bigots like the producers of Innocence of Muslims or the infantile posturers who publish Charlie Hebdo.
But their rights to offend are not the real issue. It is those of young women in Pakistan who stand up for their rights, or of Salman Tasser, assassinated for protesting against the execution of Pakistani “blasphemers”, or of the falsely accused 14-year-old threatened with death for burning the Koran. Or of Salman Rushdie who this week publishes his account of the fatwa years. Or of the producer of the Channel 4 documentary on the prophet last week suppressed after threats. Or of the rights of the brave but rash Pussy Riot, jailed for two years for dancing on an altar in Moscow.
If western democrats give an inch on defending the universality of free speech, be it of the vilest provocateurs, Islamophobes, homophobes, or Holocaust deniers, as soon as we accept the criminalisation of speech, we concede the right to religious fanatics to do the same and to draw their own arbitrary line in the sand. It is not a cost-free option. Far from it, as Ambassador Stevens proved. But it is a price democracies have to pay, and their ability to turn the other cheek is a measure not of weakness, but of their confidence in the robustness of their values, the strength of their case.