Charlie Hebdo: Religion must not get a free pass in fight for free speech

There are three lessons one should learn from the recent bouts of Islamic violence - the massacre of 2,000 innocents in Nigeria by Boko Haram, or the targeted assassinations of cartoonists and cops at Charlie Hebdo in Paris. These lessons are: freedom (of speech or religion) is indivisible across the world; two, a digression into “root causes” and provocation is unnecessary to balance a stand against violence, which is the ultimate negation of freedom; and, three, we should stop privileging religion by giving it any kind of immunity from criticism, even wrong criticism. Freedom is indivisible: On Sunday (11 January), the world congregated in Paris under the banner “Je Suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) to express solidarity with the slain cartoonists and cops. It was a wonderful expression of solidarity from all over the world that killing of any kind in the name of religion (or, for that matter, any cause) is wrong. An attack on Charlie Hebdo is like an attack on freedom of speech anywhere, and not just in France. But, too often, the world prefers to express solidarity only when terrible things happen in high-profile first world cities. When 2,000 hapless citizens are massacred just like that, one wonders why the world is not saying “I am Nigeria” too. Boko Haram is the bloodiest Islamic fundamentalist force in Africa, rivaling ISIS in Iraq and Syria. [caption id=“attachment_2037709” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The fight for freedom cannot be confined to Paris or London. AFP.[/caption] However, the real tragedy is not the lukewarm condemnation of these kinds of killings, but that the world is unwilling to call a spade a spade: the complete absence of freedom of speech or religion in most Islamic countries – from Saudi Arabia, which owns Islam’s holiest sites, to Iran to almost the whole of West Asia and North Africa. The only Muslim democracies are possibly Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and Bangladesh, but here too Islam gets a majoritarian tweak. It makes no sense to talk of freedom of speech or religion anywhere else in the world when we are unwilling to talk about it in Saudi Arabia or Iran. If Islam’s holiest Sunni and Shia hubs are unwilling to allow freedom of speech and religion, all the Islamists they are funding will be created in their own image of narrow fundamentalism. The problem has to be tackled at source, not at the destination. Saudi Arabia is the fountainhead of illiberal Islam and the arch enemy of freedom of religion. Moderate Muslims living anywhere in the secular parts of the world should be at the forefront of demanding the same religious freedoms in Saudi Arabia and Iran as they do in the countries they are living in. Freedom is ultimately indivisible. A non-free region cannot ultimately coexist with a free world. It is time to extend the intellectual fight for freedom, including freedom of religion, to Saudi Arabia. The US, as the Saudis’ ultimate military guarantor, should take the lead in insisting on this change if the ruling family wants its protection. Otherwise, it should abandon its base and let the Saudis fend for themselves. Root causes are irrelevant: In all the debates over the Charlie Hebdo killings, the terrorists would have got much psychological succour when various writers balanced their condemnation of the killings with the anti-Islam nature of the magazine’s cartooning. While it is true that publications should not be pandering to bigotry by crude caricaturisations of Islam or its prophet, or, for that matter, of any religion, linking the two – the lousy cartoons with the killings – is wholly unacceptable. When you link a grievance with a killing, you are essentially justifying the despicable act of murdering people a little. Let’s be clear; there is no major community anywhere in the world which does not have some legitimate grievance or two against the state, against the rich, against some religion or the other, against tyrants, against immigrants, against perceived discrimination, et al. Grievance cannot be redressed with violence. Root causes are important for governments and sociologists to understand and fret over and see what they can do by way of policy changes to address them, but once you link a particular act of killing and violence with “root causes”, it means giving an alibi to killers. If one community can find a grievance, so can another. It is a slippery slope. We cannot give religion immunity: Religion and god are man-made institutions. Anything man-made can, by definition, be criticised by man. Every religion was born by critiquing a previous version of the religion, or by reformers within and without. Blaspheming or critiquing an existing religion is how new ideas are born. If every new religion was – in a sense - the product of critiquing a previous one,  (consider how the Prophet destroyed all the Meccan idols to establish Allah as the only god), there is no case of treating current established religions as above criticism, or even blasphemy. Blasphemy, in my definition, is not a general licence to insult someone’s religion for no reason, but a strong critique which may not be palatable to adherents of a religion. Why should older religions be privileged over the new and modern? What is it about religion that it must be considered above reproach, when we can’t show the same consideration to fellow human beings or other institutions established by man – from governments, to armies, to courts to educational institutions? We can critique harshly any of the latter. So why privilege religion? Religion has its place in human life, or else it would not have survived for centuries. However, it has no claims to immunity from critical appraisal or even blasphemy.