Protecting religion from insults is a slippery slope

In the view of the European Court of Human Rights, the demands of pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness are so great – at least, in democratic societies – that freedom of expression should be protected even when it causes offence. In a landmark ruling in 1976, the court decided that freedom of expression applies not only to ideas “that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population”. 

The reason for this is simple. Not allowing a right to offend would open the door of censorship for anyone who claimed to be offended, shocked or disturbed.

But that is a view which most Arab governments and many Muslims flatly reject. As far as they are concerned, religious people need to be protected from remarks that cause them offence or expose them to ridicule. 

A few years after the European Court gave its ruling on the right to offend, a Muslim organisation known as the Islamic Council of Europe was pushing in the opposite direction. In 1981 it issued the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights which, said, among other things, that no one should be allowed to “hold in contempt or ridicule the religious beliefs of others”, “incite public hostility against the religious beliefs of others” or “disrespect the religious feelings of others”. 

In other words, the Islamic Declaration sought to give specially-protected status to religious beliefs as distinct from other forms of belief. Replace the word “religious” in the declaration with “political” and the problems become more obvious: the effect on public debate would be stifling. 

Between 1999 and 2011, mainly at the behest of Muslim countries, the UN General Assembly, the UN Commission on Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Council passed a series of resolutions to combat “defamation of religions”. 

Since then, the Muslim countries have backed off (a bit). At the UN Human Rights Council, support for protecting religions from “defamation” gradually waned and in 2011 the council approved a resolution which did not mention “defamation”, “vilification” or “denigration” of religions at all. Instead, it talked more constructively about ways of combating intolerance, negative stereotyping, stigmatisation, discrimination, incitement to violence, and actual violence based on religion or belief. The resolution, put forward by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, was accepted without a vote. 

At the international level this was a significant victory for free expression, but as far as the Islamic countries were concerned it was probably due more to a recognition that they were outnumbered in the council than to a change in their views. At a national level, it made little impact and some countries moved the other way. Here are just a few examples:

Tunisia

In June 2012, disturbances over a contemporary art exhibition in Tunisia left 100 people injured and 160 under arrest, with a night-time curfew imposed on eight regions of the country. At the centre of this trouble was the Printemps Des Arts [Springtime of the Arts] fair in La Marsa, a chic seaside town on the outskirts of Tunis which serves as a summer retreat for wealthier Tunisians. The ten-day show, authorised by the Ministry of Culture, featured a large number of artists and was aimed mainly at a liberal/secular crowd. 

On the eve of its opening a small group of Salafis turned up, apparently to protest, but they left after discovering that it was not – as they had thought – an event celebrating homosexuality. The show then continued normally until it was about to end. Héla Ammar, one of the exhibitors recalled:

"Everything went well until the closing day, when a local official came to assess certain paintings that he personally found shocking. According to his own testimony [in a television interview], he also shared the images online, adding his own interpretations and warned imams in certain mosques of their supposedly blasphemous nature."

A video circulated on the internet urged “all followers of Islam” to “rise in anger” and about 20 protesters arrived at the exhibition – as well as a larger number of its supporters who had been summoned by the organisers. After some heated discussion, police separated the two groups peacefully and also removed a few of the more controversial artworks on the grounds that this would reduce the tension.

Later that evening, however, a much larger group of protesters assembled to march on the exhibition. One witness reported seeing hundreds of people, some brandishing swords, who turned on a small contingent of police: “They were throwing rocks at the police. I was very afraid. I ran to the car and locked the door.” Some of them gained entry to the building, slashing at least two paintings and throwing one piece of sculpture on to the roof. 

A large installation was removed from the courtyard and taken outside to be burned. Among the graffiti daubed on the walls, one said “Let God be the judge”, and another said: “Tunisia is an Islamic state; with the licence of the Ministry of Culture, the Prophet of Allah gets insulted.” Some of the artists also received threatening and abusive messages after their names were listed on Facebook.

There’s no doubt that much of the art on display was provocative and ridiculed extreme forms of Islam. One showed a Superman figure in a Salafi-style beard, cradling another bearded man in his arms. Another showed an angry, bearded face with steam coming out of the ears. A naked female figure, with a plate of couscous covering her private parts, was seen surrounded by dark and menacing male figures. A sculpture had statues of three veiled women buried up to their chests with stones. 

One artwork depicted lines of ants creeping into a child’s schoolbag. The formation of the ants spelled “Subhan Allah” (“Glory to God”) in Arabic. Another piece incorporated a crescent, a cross and a Star of David with the words: “République Islaïque de Tunisie” – “Islaïque” being a made-up term combining “Islam” with “laïque”, the French word for “secular”.

In Héla Ammar’s view, however, the artists had become scapegoats in a bigger struggle over the future of Tunisia. She told al-Jazeera:

"This affair has been entirely manufactured to eclipse more serious issues. We are in the middle of a war between several political movements, with the Salafists and other reactionary movements which are pressuring the present government against moderation and appeasement.

"The debates over identity and religion are false problems which distract from a precarious security situation, grave economic and social problems that have not yet been resolved, and a transitional justice system which is proving difficult to set up ... 

"Under Ben Ali, we suffered most of all from self-censorship when it came to tackling political subjects. Now, the censorship is based on religious and moral questions, which has made things even worse."

Ironically, only a small proportion the court cases in Arab countries about “insulting” or “defaming” religion involve intentionally blasphemous behaviour. Mostly, they are the result of quarrels between Muslims, between Christians and Muslims, between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims, or simply a case of people pursuing grudges. Many of the cases that go to court are also extraordinarily trivial and sometimes purely vexatious.

Algeria

In the Algerian city of Biskra, 26-year-old Samia Smets was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment – the maximum allowed by the law – for desecrating the Qur’an. She was already in jail (over a civil matter) at the time of the alleged offence and was accused by other prisoners of having torn a copy of the holy book. Smets, who was not legally represented in court, denied tearing it and said she had accidentally dropped the book in water during an argument. A year later, a judge hearing her appeal overturned the conviction for lack of evidence – including the prosecution’s failure to produce the supposedly torn Qur’an. 

Egypt

In Egypt during the first couple of years after the fall of the Mubarak regime, at least 17 cases alleging contempt of religion were filed with the courts – many of them rooted in Christian-Muslim rivalries. One of the most bizarre Egyptian cases involved two Coptic Christian boys, aged nine and ten, who spent fifteen days in juvenile detention after being accused of urinating on pages of the Qur’an. The boys, living in a mixed Muslim/Christian village were said to have been seen taking the pages behind a mosque where they committed the alleged offence. A neighbour told the Associated Press the boys were illiterate and could not have recognised the pages as coming from the Qur’an. 

Yemen

In 2005 Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, published some offensive cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad – triggering a campaign which led to worldwide protests by Muslims several months later. Yemen was one of the countries where thousands of demonstrators took to the streets and shops announced they were refusing to sell Danish products. The Yemen Observer, an English-language weekly, reported these protests along with an editorial comment and tiny reproductions of three of the offending cartoons – each partly obliterated with a thick black X.

A week later Mohammed al-Asadi, the paper’s editor, was arrested on charges of offending Islam. Prosecution lawyers called for the execution of Asadi, the closure of the Yemen Observer and confiscation of its assets. The government suspended the paper’s licence and it was unable to print for more than six months, though staff continued to publish on the internet.

According to Asadi, the real problem was not the cartoons (which the paper had condemned) but an editorial which had annoyed hardliners by calling for Muslims to accept Danish apologies and act with “calm and dignity”. However, prosecution lawyers and the Yemeni attorney-general insisted that the charges rested on the images alone, and neither the news report nor the editorial could be used in evidence.

Arab legal systems sometimes provide opportunities for citizens to involve themselves in court cases if they happen to have an axe to grind, and the Yemen Observer trial was no exception. Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, a former friend of Osama bin Laden who had been listed by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, who in the 1980s had tricked western scientists into endorsing the Qur’an’s “scientific knowledge” and who later announced that he had discovered a cure for HIV/AIDS, joined the legal fray with a massive claim for damages, alleging that reproduction of the cartoons had violated Muslims’ civil rights. Zindani’s claim was eventually dismissed but the court fined Asadi 500,000 rials ($2,320), saying that he had handled the cartoons “inappropriately”.