Satanic Verses

What a Difference a Year Makes: Geert Wilders, the MCB & the Stench of Hypocrisy

What a difference a year makes…

On the 8th February 2008 following the refusal by the Home Office to grant a visa to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Inayat Bunglawala on behalf of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) told the BBC that the decision had:

“worrying implications for freedom of speech”.

“Whatever one may think of some of Qaradawi’s views, the way forward is surely to allow them to be aired and then, if appropriate, to challenge them openly.”

Given a year ago that the MCB were keen advocates of free speech – ‘the way forward is surely to allow [views] to be aired and then, if appropriate, to challenge them openly’ – it seems quite bizarre that they now seem to have undergone a sharp u-turn.

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The Satanic Verses and the Ayatollah’s Fatwa: 20 Years On

Saturday 14th February 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie and the publication of his novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’. Based upon stories about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the novel caused controversy due to it being interpreted by some Muslims as blasphemous and offensive. Not only against the Prophet himself but also against some of the central tenets of Islam.

Following India’s lead in banning the book in January 1989, the Ayatollah took the matter into his own hands – and to an unprecedented level – by issuing a fatwa that called for the death of Rushdie, claiming that it was the duty of every Muslim worldwide to obey his pronouncement. Reports suggest that despite the fatwa, Khomeini hadn’t read the book.

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No Offence…??? Why not…??? (Birmingham Post, Thursday 16th October 2008)

This month’s chunk for the Birmingham Post:

Should we have the right to offend?

I ask this not because I was personally offended by Joe Kinnear’s swear-a-thon. Nor even because I offended my partner by licking my knife in a restaurant. I ask because there just seems to be a lot of people getting easily offended.

Being almost twenty years since Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ was published could it just be ‘déjà vu’? No, but there are some similarities.

I was at an event for fifty ‘leaders’ – I was included in this so use the term loosely – last week in Whitehall that sought to consider ‘security and community cohesion’ (a euphemism for extremism and terrorism, natch). Whilst many clearly focused on this, a few were voicing their plans to protest against the publication of ‘The Jewel of Medina’, a Mills and Boon-lite account of one of the Prophet Muhammad’s wives, Aisha. Possibly because of their ‘offence’ at this, they seemed to have forgotten the clear lessons learned from some of the protests that followed the Satanic Verses and Danish cartoons debacles.

A few days ago, I also read how others were ‘offended’ by a London exhibition by the artist Sarah Maples. Described as the next Tracey Emin, Maples – who was raised as a Muslim – has caused ‘offence’ by using one of her paintings – depicting a Muslim woman cradling a pig – as the advertisement for the exhibition. Maples has categorically stated that she does not want to offend arguing that her work actually explores the confusion that many young Muslims face in contemporary western society, not least about what it means to be a ‘good’ Muslim.

Given that the offices of the publishers in London of ‘The Jewel of Medina’ have already been firebombed, it seems that some of those protesting – whether against ‘The Jewel’ or Maples – have missed the irony in that their actions are also quite ‘offensive’…!!!

Which highlights the point: whilst some are ‘offended’ by knife licking, others are ‘offended’ by paintings they dislike. In this column last Christmas, I even offered help to those ‘offended’ by Christmas lights, Eid celebrations and so on. And that was because offence is entirely subjective thus rendering it entirely un-manageable.

Is being ‘offended’ therefore legitimate enough to curb freedom of speech and expression?

In the past, free speech was seen as something that was inherently good. Because of this, restrictions and limitations on free speech were viewed as the exception rather than the rule, to be wielded carefully and only in those cases where speech might cause direct harm. In fact, legislation that affords protection against those trying to harm are rightly in place.

Yet nowadays, we seem to believe that speech and activities that ‘offend’ are in some way socially damaging and so require necessary curtailment. In an increasingly diverse society, this becomes increasingly difficult to manage, balancing one view against another. If we are therefore edging perilously closer to a situation where ‘if I don’t like what you say, you can’t say it’ becomes the rule rather than the exception, whose ‘offence’ will be given most importance?

Expanding upon the Maple ‘offence’ and the fact that pork is seen to be unclean, if vegetarians say that they are ‘offended’ by the sight of ALL meat in supermarkets because it is ‘unclean’, should we immediately oblige and remove it from the shelves? Is this the same or does it merely highlight how we treat people depending upon who they are? If so, we’re not as a society moving forward in a fair and equitable way.

Freedom of expression – including the right to offend – is therefore not just an important liberty; it is the very foundation of liberty. It is everybody’s business to ensure that no one is deprived of their right to say what they wish, even if what they say is seen as offensive by one or indeed many more.

This work by Chris Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Based on a work at www.chris-allen.co.uk.

The Jewel of Medina: light the blue touch paper, step back and wait…

I’ve referred to the publication of ‘The Jewel of Medina’ previously, suggesting that the response from some Muslims and Muslim organisations seems to have completely overlooked the fallout and legacy of ‘The Satanic Verses’ affair. In fact, on the day that I posted a twenty year reflection on the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’ a week or so ago, the Islington offices of Gibson House publishers were firebombed. This is only the tip of the iceberg. It is likely that over the next few months, numerous others – both here and elsewhere around the world – are going to be undertaking similar campaigns and protests without any consideration whatsoever of the potential or actual ramifications. Not just for them but for all Muslims without differentiation.

For those fortunately unaware, ‘The Jewel of Medina’ is a historical novel by the author, Sherry Jones. The novel tells an entirely fictionalised account of the life of Aisha, one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad and the person who accompanied him as he received most of his revelations. The novel sets out to tell Aisha’s story from the age of six when she was betrothed to Muhammad, through to his death.

It was originally scheduled for publication in the United States by Random House earlier this year but was duly canceled amid fears of a ‘Rushdie’ style backlash from Muslims. This was not because the publishers received any complaints from Muslims themselves. But instead from Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Islamic History at the University of Texas, who condemned the book as ‘offensive’. Random House immediately dropped it. Since then, it has been subsequently announced that it would be published by Beaufort Books in the US and by Gibson Square here in the United Kingdom later this month.

In the twenty years since the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’, we seem to have internalised what can only be a sense of ‘self-censorship’. Nowadays publishers drop books, theatres are uneasy about staging certain plays, opera houses cut productions and art galleries censor shows. And on the whole, these things are all done before any Muslims complain, let alone whether or not they were even going to do so. An example of this was when Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council ‘banned’ toy pigs just in case they offended Muslims during Ramadan.

What seems to be the victim of all this is ‘free speech’ – to some extent, freedom per se.

Even this doesn’t seem to be enough for some, and so when ‘self-censorship’ doesn’t work, legislation seems to fill the void, not only outlawing hate speech but also such things as the defamation of religion and saying just what you believe. And before others jump to say that it is not only those against Islam and Muslims that are allegedly being silenced by these processes, our British laws against the glorification of terrorism also impact upon Muslims and indeed others.

Having attended a ‘Leaders Summit’ in Westminster earlier this week – supported by the likes of Sadiq Khan MP – on the issue of ‘security and community cohesion’ (clearly a euphemism for ‘terrorism’ and ‘preventing violent extremism’), there were a small number of Muslim ‘representatives’ that were peddling these type of arguments. Look slightly beyond the limits of their at times irrational rhetoric and you will see that restrictions of ‘free speech’ are being imposed on us all. It’s not just Muslims: is it not only a one way process.

More worryingly, I was concerned to hear a handful of those same Muslim ‘representatives’ voicing their anger about the book’s proposed publication and calling for ‘action’. Most worrying was one representative – whose name I did not hear – who stated that he was from the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (UKACIA), an organisation I thought had long been wound up. As one reputable Muslim website describes UKACIA:

[UKACIA] were instrumental in convening a meeting of over twenty like-minded Muslim organizations…on 11 October 1988 in order to mobilize public opinion and coordinate actions against The Satanic Verses

And what a good job they did then. If they have reformed, or even felt merely reinvigorated by the thought of doing ‘the same again’, then of course this is extremely worrying – and completely unnecessary. Doing the ‘the same again’ – angry Muslim men and women shouting on the streets, carrying offensive banners, burning books, burning effigies and so on – will be a massive own goal for all concerned. It will further impinge upon the bounds of free speech for all of us and will reinvigorate the vilification and stereotypification of Muslims and Islam for at least another twenty years. It will further increase ‘self-censorship’ also.

It will – to the greater anger of those Muslims engaging in public displays of outrage – also send the book to the top of the bestseller charts and make both the author and the publishers a huge amount of money. Imagine though without the protests and without the outrage, how the book would have – like numerous other poorly written novels today – have been published, remained unread and made a loss for the publishers who were no doubt hoping for a ‘controversial’ impetus to boost its returns.

If no-one made a profit, wouldn’t that soon stop this type of thing happening again? I’m certain that it would.

Nonetheless, the madder members of society will continue with the shouting and barracking, lacking any apparent reason, rationale or responsibility in the process. The Muslim Council of Britain are meeting this weekend to orchestrate a response. Let’s hope that they have some influence and can halt the drive towards even greater restrictions on our free speech.

Light the blue touch paper, step back and watch…

This work by Chris Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Based on a work at www.chris-allen.co.uk.

The Satanic Verses: a 20th anniversary retrospective

Last Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. The ‘affair’ that ensued was, as the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia stated some years later, “one of the formative, defining events” in shaping how Muslims and Islam are understood in British society today. As such, I thought that I’d (belatedly) mark this anniversary with a short retrospective.

As Rushdie’s fourth novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’ was understood to be constructed around stories from the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the title referencing Ibn Ishaq’s biography of him. Causing some controversy at the time of its publication, it was interpreted by many Muslims as blasphemous with many of its analogous storylines allegedly denigrating Muhammad and his prophethood as well as his wives. Similar denigrations were also alleged against some of the theological tenets and beliefs of Islam. Following India’s lead in banning the book, in early 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini took the matter to an unprecedented level at the time by issuing a fatwa in Iran that called for the death of Rushdie, claiming that it was the duty of every Muslim to obey his pronouncement. Despite this, at no time in his life did Khomeini read the book.

In Britain, the response to the book was overwhelming. On the 14 January 1989, a large number of Muslims took to the streets of Bradford and publicly burnt copies of it. Whilst the local and national press initially showed little interest, a small group of protesters videotaped the proceedings, later distributing it to various news agencies. Despite being poorly produced, shortly afterwards images of Muslims burning books on the streets of England were broadcast around the world. Evoking comparisons to the Reconquista, the Inquisition and the Reformation, the most damning comparisons were those that recalled Hitler’s Nazis less than a century beforehand. In what was an attempt to gain publicity, the images evolved into little more than a PR catastrophe that inadvertently signaled the beginning of much wider processes: of the widespread condemnation of Muslims and their indiscriminate vilification.

The presence of Muslims in Britain (and by default Islam too) was brought sharply under the public and political gazed, framed and informed by history and its various legacies about Islam and Muslims. More importantly, it was also informed by what had gone before and what was yet to come. Given that Muslims and their presence in Britain had previously been somewhat unacknowledged – most had previously been collectively defined within the homogenous marker of ‘Asian’ – so the first formal recognition of British Muslims and the presence of Islam in Britain was a highly politicised one and through the association with Khomeini, one that was largely indistinguishable from the ‘fundamentalist’– to employ the terminology of the day – forms of Islam that had initiated revolution in Iran.

The protests went global and within a month of the events in Bradford, similar protests had taken place in Bombay, Kashmir, Dacca and Islamabad, the latter seeing five protesters killed and hundreds more injured. Unsurprisingly, these protests were also broadcast around the world and were uncannily similar to those associated with the protests that followed the second publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten in early 2006. Both events were highly mediatised and to a great degree, hyper-real.

As with the Danish cartoons furore, so the Satanic Verses affair was seen to present a direct challenge to many of the deeply held values of Britain and ‘the West’ per se: freedom of expression, disagreement, equality, democracy and tolerance. As Elizabeth Poole has since wrote, the Satanic Verses affair was represented by the media as posing a serious threat to liberal and progressive British and Western values: threatened by archaic, retrogressive and irrational Muslims, adherents to an outdated and outmoded religious belief system that history had shown us was inherently violent, barbaric and intolerant.

Despite twenty years having passed, some Muslims, some Muslim organisations and some parts of the media appear to have learned nothing. In February this year I wrote how I was increasingly distressed by knee-jerk reactions by some Muslims and their organisations that afford the media far too many opportunities to show pictures of Muslim men or angry niqabis with placards shouting abuse whilst commentators warn of the impending clash of civilisations at the same time as opinion polls pit sharia law against democracy. Those same Muslims and their organisations then turn on the media and denounce them for further vilifying and stereotyping them. It’s a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle that neither ‘side’ seem to want to break and for whom all are equally to blame.

And it is this, for me, that perpetuates and reinforces the legacy of the Satanic Verses Affair and why this legacy continues to inform much of how all Muslims and the entirety of Islam continues to be indiscriminately presented and perceived.

Next month will see the publication of a new novel, ‘Jewel of Medina’ and the potential for a whole new’ Satanic Verses affair’ to unfold in front of our very eyes. The book is said to be about the Prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his youngest wife, Aisha, and has been described as a “soft-porn” novel. Already it is believed that emails are being circulated calling on British Muslim organisations to act now to stop its publication.

If the necessary lessons have been learned from the Satanic Verses affair, neither individual Muslims nor Muslim organisations will take the bait. If the lessons haven’t been learned, then we will see history repeat itself and the legacy of the Satanic Verses affair will likely continue for at least another twenty years also.

If however the lessons have been learnt, then we will see the beginnings of a far more mature and confident approach that may will contribute to the right to freedom of expression, the right to disagreement, the right to equality and the right to democracy that all of us have.

This work by Chris Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Based on a work at www.chris-allen.co.uk.

“If people don’t like it, it’s their tough luck…”: tolerating the intolerable redux

After posting ‘”It’s part of our religion…our identity…our culture”: tolerating the intolerable’, a regular to this blog commented:

“If you are not breaking the law, you should be able to do what you want. And if people don’t like it, it’s their tough luck”

My full response to this can be read here but as I put it, I do think that approaches such as ‘if people don’t like it, it’s their tough luck’ are very dangerous and a somewhat unworkable premise from which to begin discussing how an increasingly diverse and rapidly changing society moves forward. Because of this, I feel that it is necessary to explore my thinking further.

First off, such laissez faire arguments completely bypass any recognition of respect, something that in effect diminishes the rights of the individual, the group and the society as a whole. Here the individual, the collective, and the communal are indeterminably reduced and – dare I say it – rendered somewhat unnecessary. I would even go as far as suggesting that it verges on being ‘Social Darwinism’ albeit in a different guise.

Don’t agree…? Then what about the rhetoric employed by racists and bigots over the decades. Isn’t the sentiment underpinning the old adage, “if they don’t like it here, then they can go back home” pretty much the same?

Criminal or illegal…? No.

The reason why I ask whether it is ‘criminal or illegal’ is because as the comment put it, “If you are not breaking the law, you should be able to do what you want”. Again, I believe that this is as equally misguided. If not, then as long as something is neither criminal nor illegal, then neither can it be wrong whether morally, ethically, socially or whatever. In this way, the publication of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the British newspapers would have been fine (incidentally, none of the British national newspapers printed them).

So too would the BNP being cleared of inciting racial hatred in 2006. “If you are not breaking the law, you should be able to do what you want” therefore means that along with many other things, it should be completely acceptable and legitimate to describe Islam as a “wicked, vicious faith”; to state that Muslims are turning Britain into a “multi-racial hell hole”; and that as a society, we should “show these ethnics the door in 2004″. These are not my words I hasten to add, but the words of Nick Griffin and Mark Collett from the BNP: words that were deemed not to have broken the law. And when I use the term ‘we’, I use this as being a British citizen that is comfortable with being a part of a wider (multicultural) British society rather than a jingoistic, racist bigot.

To develop this line of thinking, I came up with the following list of things and activities that did not involve breaking the law. At the same time however, I would suggest that a vast few numbers of people – in some cases the majority – would prefer them either to not happen or at least have some boundaries/ limitations placed upon them (NB: the list is NOT a list of things that I personally find offensive or inoffensive, right or wrong. Merely an indicative list of activities to illustrate a point):

Bullying
Breastfeeding in public
Wearing the niqab
Swearing in public
BNP/ NF marches
Binge drinking
Satanic, pagan, cult and heretical religions being practised openly and/ or recruiting
Animal sacrifice
Embryo experimentation
Cloning
Abortion
Smoking
Smacking
Over-eating
Public drinking
Overt sexual advertising
Sale of Mein Kampf in bookshops
Sale of Satanic Verses in bookshops
Direct targeting of children with advertising of junk food
Free speech
Pole dancing

None of these things necessarily break the law. But does this mean that they are all right and proper…? And if you don’t think that they are right and proper, should we as a society collectively respond by saying ‘tough’…?

Which of course brings me back to my initial point in the first post: whether we need to have societal ‘boundaries’ or whether the demarcation between the criminal and non is enough?

In Britain, discussions about multiculturalism are marked by a stark paradox. Many welcome the fact that Britain is a multicultural society and delight in its diversity. Yet some of these people also reject multiculturalism. How is it possible to do this and how can those who recognise the value of cultural diversity take such a diametrically opposed standpoint on multiculturalism?

There are several explanations available. However, the most important is the two different ways in which the term ‘multiculturalism’ is employed.

For some, multiculturalism stands for cultural isolationism or ghettoisation, based on the view that every community is in some way self-contained and self-authenticating, unquestionably having the right to live by its own social and cultural norms. ‘Outsiders’ cannot therefore judge or criticise and should respect each communities autonomy (the ‘if they don’t like it, tough’ approach?).

Multiculturalism in this sense would seem to undermine attempts to have a shared life, existence, and experience. More importantly, it works against the whole notion of a multicultural society. Because different cultures do not passively coexist but instead interact and influence each other, multiculturalism defined in this way immediately puts a halt to such processes. Advocates of a multicultural society can therefore see multiculturalism as a barrier or obstacle to their societal aspiration or ideal. Such an approach might be described as isolationist or relativist multiculturalism.

Those who welcome multiculturalism and see no problems with the notion of a multicultural society define things very differently. Here the view is that every culture has limitations and benefits from a dialogue with others. Such dialogues accentuate new visions of life, exposes new world-views, looks at itself from the standpoint of others, increases its self-knowledge, and creates the conditions for human freedom and – allegedly – rationality.

This view therefore engenders the belief that different cultures should be respected but at the same time, brought into a process of interaction and engagement. It challenges the hegemonic dominant culture, exposes its biases and limitations, and helps create a composite culture in which ‘others’ can see something of themselves and their culture, and through which they can claim some ownership of. This model of multiculturalism is one where different cultures and communities feel valued and respected.

It is also necessary in this model – the one that I wholeheartedly prefer – for all of this to take place within an agreed system of rights and obligations: the boundaries from both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ that I mentioned in my original post. This model might therefore be called a dialogical or pluralist view of multiculturalism: the type of multiculturalism my earlier post was suggesting.

“If people don’t like it, it’s their tough luck…”? Well maybe for some, but not in the multiculturalism that I prefer or in the multicultural society that I would like to see develop. Having said that though, where and how we begin to negotiate the necessary boundaries and who decides what these are is the real challenge facing us all.

This work by Chris Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Based on a work at www.chris-allen.co.uk.