The Government has, after all, issued bans for lesser offences. Last year, an
American martial arts expert was denied entry because his presence was
deemed not āconducive to the public goodā. A Right-wing American talk show
host, Michael Savage, was also barred.
Although the Pakistani government has distanced itself from the bounty, it has
hardly distinguished itself. On Friday, the government declared a national
holiday, āLove the Prophet Dayā, in a craven effort to appease the religious
Right. The predictable result was widespread rioting, in which more than 20
people were killed.
This is par for the course in a state which has imprisoned a disabled
14-year-old girl on charges of blasphemy, stands by as minorities are
slaughtered, and allows international terrorists such as Lashkar-e-Taiba to
operate with impunity. Last year, the governor of the Punjab and the
governmentās only Christian minister were both shot dead for advocating
reform of blasphemy laws. It is heartening that thousands of Pakistanis volunteered to clean up their
cities after last weekās rampages. But these are small currents in a torrent
of bigotry. Mr Bilour, unsurprisingly, remains in office despite his
dalliance with international contract killing.
Pakistan is not the only culprit in this regard. Egyptās President Mohammed
Morsi, instead of apologising for his disgraceful delay in halting and
condemning the recent ssault on the US embassy in Cairo, demanded that the
United States ārespectā Arab norms.
The problem, however, is not that we in the West have too much free speech ā
itās that we have too little. We ourselves are content to proscribe insults
under the guise of public order. Yet our response in such times should be to
redouble our efforts to protect even unpopular ideas, including those with
no literary or artistic merit. The solution is categorically not a global
ban on the defamation of religion, a perverse idea that keeps popping up in
the UN, and was again raised last week by Pakistanās prime minister, but
rather laws that demonstrate a consistent and absolute commitment to free
speech, short of inciting violence.
Even before the furore over The Innocence of Muslims, Channel 4 was forced to
cancel a screening of the historian Tom Hollandās film, Islam: the Untold
Story, because of āsecurity concernsā. But that is a euphemism. Security
concerns do not make threats. Extremists do. Every time someone threatens
free speech with violence, and particularly when the agitator is in a
position of authority, like Mr Bilour, the fog of self-censorship thickens
and the insidious climate of āsecurity concernsā weighs a little heavier on
all those deciding whether to exercise their basic rights.
Salman Rushdie wrote earlier this year: āIf the creative artist worries if he
will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.ā But this isnāt
really about creative artists. If Holland or Nakoula are worried about their
safety today, then none of us are free tomorrow.The Telegraph
