The fraud of freedom of expression

After the Charlie Hebdo attack, it is not hard to predict that debates on subjects such as Islam, European identity and multiculturalism will not remain confined to France but will be revived as a subject of debate for the whole world.

We live in a world in which Europe tries to market, and even impose, multiculturalism, freedom of expression and the right of cultures to exist as values to the entire globe. Truly, if it did not fill these values with content as it pleases, and kept to the very end to the standards it laid down at the outset, these would be values to which, up to a point, there would be no need to object.

Neither multiculturalism, as an important domain in which freedom manifests itself, nor freedom of expression are values to which Muslims can object. The uproar that tries to put Muslims into a certain complex on this matter knows full well that there is no such thing as unlimited freedom of expression.

Just as there is no such thing as the freedom to restrict the freedom of others, it is impossible to consider discourses that violate, insult, demean and stoke hatred against the rights of other people as falling within freedom of expression. Those who, the moment the sacred values of Muslims are at issue, erect "freedom of expression" before Muslims like an idol made of halva, eat that idol with appetite, without a blush, when the matter is anti-Semitism, a racism within themselves, hate speech and the like.

In fact we do not object to their eating the idol. If an idol has been made, it will either be smashed or be eaten. The problem is that when the idol that is eaten when hunger strikes is eaten, it is most often not noticed to be an idol, or rather, it is not "reasoned."

Still, there is some good in their remembering that the halva being eaten is an idol, even if only at a point that suits their own purposes. But it falls to us to remind them that those values, in the form in which they set them up against Muslims, have turned in their own hands into idols: Muslims object neither to multiculturalism nor to freedom of expression. Through these events, through this very treatment they have actually faced, Muslims bear witness to how values that are valid in the world are turning into idols.

When used in such a way as to constitute those who set out to insult the sacred things of Muslims, those values turn into an idol that has also been diverted from its own purposes.

In the end no one is wholly faithful, nor can anyone be, to the claim this idol carries. The most important feature of this Idol, of values that have the quality of an Idol, is that it runs against human nature. As the Pope too expressed very realistically, no one tolerates degradation, cursing or insult directed at his mother, his honor, his dignity or anything he holds sacred. No one remains unresponsive in the face of such acts.

Drawing the apt lessons from the grave consequences of its own great sins in the Second World War, the Western world enacted regulations that make both anti-Semitism and racism crimes. Moreover, it kept the scope of this crime so broad that it brought under anti-Semitism not only expressions or acts of hatred against Judaism but even opening the number of Jews who died in the Second World War to debate, and deemed such discourses an expression of hostility to Jews. For this reason many people, Roger Garaudy first among them, were put on trial. In the parliaments of this same Europe today, it has been accepted as an indisputable fact that the Armenians went through a genocide in 1915, and it has been accepted that the statements of anyone who denies this fact or opens it to debate cannot be considered within "freedom of expression." This is in fact a highly exaggerated example, an admission, that a limit to freedom of expression also exists in this world, and it is also a perfect example of a value turning into a convenient idol.

Through the idols erected by means of these insults to their most sacred beings, Muslims' patience is being tested, and, according to another ignorant understanding, they are being "disciplined." In this way, plain as day, hostility to Muslims and hatred against Muslims are turned into a norm. Again in this way it reveals that it has in fact by no means overcome anti-Semitism, that is, racism, that is, fascism, but rather has badly suppressed its inclinations in that regard because of certain pressures. For there is categorically no difference whatsoever between these discourses displayed against Islam and anti-Semitism.

The guarantees that have formed on anti-Semitism, that is, exclusively on the matter of Jews, do not stem from the Western world having overcome racism or having formed a certain protective sensitivity against fascism. Had that been so, we could have been very optimistic about the future. Yet even with these guarantees secured on anti-Semitism, Islamophobic discourses show that an evil that could recur when it finds an opportunity is still lying in wait.

When you dig beneath the discourses that force Muslims into a complex on freedom of expression, you see the authoritarianism of that fascism. Even in the way multiculturalism is expressed as a discourse, there are clear messages that a "multiculturalism" model can be realized only with cultures that have proven their loyalty to the essence of Western culture, that is, cultures that are not essentially very distant and different. That is, after submitting to the dominant culture and accepting its superiority and its determining role in many fields, the more cultural residue remains, the more multiculturalism there is.

Is this the climate to be deemed fit for Muslims, who for centuries displayed, through countless experiences, the most perfect examples of freedom of religion and conscience to people?