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<DIV><FONT size=4><A
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ash5oct05,0,6339754.story?track=tothtml"><FONT
size=3>http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ash5oct05,0,6339754.story?track=tothtml</FONT></A><BR></DIV>
<H1>Censoring Ourselves Is No Way to Fight Terrorism</H1>
<DIV class=storysubhead>Violence now looms for those who only dare to express
the unpopular.</DIV>
<DIV>By Timothy Garton Ash</DIV>
<DIV><BR><FONT size=3>TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is professor of European studies at
Oxford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University.<BR></FONT><BR>October 5, 2006<BR><BR>ALMOST EVERY DAY brings a new
threat to free expression. A French philosopher is in hiding, running for his
life from death threats on Islamist websites, because he published an article in
a French newspaper saying that Muhammad is revealed in the Koran as a "master of
hate." A production of Mozart's "Idomeneo," which at one point displays the
severed (plastic? papier mache?) head of Muhammad alongside those of Jesus,
Buddha and Poseidon, is pulled off the stage of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin
after an anonymous telephone call to the local police raises fears of violence.
And that's just the last week.<BR><BR>Going slightly further back, there's the
murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and the murderous hounding of Ayaan
Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie. A British anti-fascist activist is beaten
following the publication of his photograph and address on a far-right website
called Redwatch. Animal-rights activists make death threats against medical
researchers and their families. Sikh extremists force a play they dislike to be
taken off the British stage. Christian extremists threaten BBC executives
because they broadcast "Jerry Springer: The Opera." Need I go
on?<BR><BR><I>Fanatiques sans frontieres</I> are on the march. It's wrong to
describe this as a single "war on terror"; our adversaries and their ideologies
are so diverse. But if you think we are not engaged in a struggle against
manifold enemies of freedom as potentially deadly as those we faced in the
1930s, you are living in a fool's paradise. In the first decade of the 21st
century, the spaces of free expression are being eroded and — if we don't summon
ourselves to the fight — will continue to be eroded. <BR><BR>The erosion comes
in many different ways. Most obviously, there is violence or the threat of
violence: "If you say that, we will kill you." This is dramatically facilitated
in our time by the Internet, e-mail and cellphones. That French philosopher,
Robert Redeker, went into hiding after an Islamist website called for him — "the
pig" — to be "punished by the lions of France" as "the lion of Holland, Mohammed
al-Bouyeri, did," and then gave Redeker's address, photograph and phone number.
Bouyeri was the slayer of Theo van Gogh.<BR><BR>Down the scale, there is
peaceful public protest, sometimes with an implicit threat of violence. There
are also other forms of less visible pressure, including the use of economic
weapons — the boycott of Danish goods in some Islamic countries following the
Danish cartoons scandal, for example. <BR><BR>Then there's self-censorship in
the face of such threats. Chancellor Angela Merkel aptly described the Deutsche
Oper's decision to pull "Idomeneo" as "self-censorship out of fear." But
self-censorship can also flow from a well-intentioned notion of multicultural
harmony, on the lines of "you respect my taboo, and I'll respect yours." And
there are misguided attempts by democratic governments to ensure domestic peace
by legislating to curb free expression. The British government's original
proposal for a law banning "incitement to religious hatred" was a case in
point.<BR><BR>The threats come from diverse quarters. It would be absurd to
pretend that Islamist extremists are not among the current leaders in
intimidation. <BR><BR>But the jihadists are not alone. <BR><BR>Even as I write,
news reaches me of a friend, Tony Judt, a historian and outspoken critic of
recent Israeli policy, finding that a talk he was to give about "the Israel
lobby and U.S. foreign policy" at the Polish Consulate in New York was canceled
after phone calls to the host institution from "a couple of Jewish groups,"
including the Anti-Defamation League, according to the Polish consul. Such phone
calls are, of course, not comparable with death threats. But this is all part of
a many-fronted, incremental erosion of free expression, even in the classic
lands of the free such as the U.S., France and Britain.<BR><BR>What is to be
done? First, we need to wake up to the seriousness of the danger. We need a
debate about what the law should and should not allow to be said or written.
Even John Stuart Mill did not suggest that everyone should be allowed to say
anything any time and anywhere. We also need a debate about what it is
<I>prudent</I> and <I>wise</I> to say in a globalized world where people of
different cultures live so close together, like roommates separated only by thin
curtains. <BR><BR>I believe, for example, that Redeker's article in Le Figaro
was an intemperate and unwise one, with its claim that Islam (not just Islamism
or jihadism) is today's equivalent of Soviet-style world communism, and his
denunciation of Muhammad as a "pitiless warlord, pillager, massacrer of Jews and
polygamist." But once the <I>fanatiques sans frontieres</I> respond by proposing
to kill him, we must stand in total solidarity with the threatened writer — in
the spirit of Voltaire. <BR><BR>Never mind that Voltaire probably never said
exactly what is so often attributed to him: "I disapprove of what you say, but I
will defend to the death your right to say it." This was Voltaire's spirit
nonetheless. Too many recent responses in such cases, from the Rushdie affair
onward, have had this syntax reversed: "Of course I defend his/her freedom of
expression, but … " <BR><BR>Voltaire got it right: first the dissent, but then
the unconditional solidarity. Now we are all called upon to play our part. The
future of freedom depends on words prevailing over
knives.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>