Only guaranteed free speech liberates public reason

The government’s response to the review of religious freedom must uphold the Western tradition. The Western model of religious freedom secures individual dignity, equality before the law, the flourishing of free speech and public reason as public goods. It strengthens civil society by preventing undue political interference in spiritual matters, thus providing for the limited state.

The only constraint on religious freedom should be the principle of no harm.

The treatment of religious freedom in Islamist states provides a useful contrast to the West for the purpose of defining its meaning and social effects. The case of Pakistani woman Asia Bibi made headlines because, in Western terms, the criminalisation of blasphemy constitutes an attack on freedom of speech and, by extension, public reason. Her mistreatment by fellow citizens demonstrates why protecting religious freedom as a universal public good is so essential to the flourishing of civil society.

In 2009, Bibi worked as a farmhand. She was accused of blasphemy after Muslims objected to her drinking water from a shared source because they considered Christians unclean. Bibi was attacked violently and in 2010 she was sentenced to death under section 295C of the Pakistan Penal Code, which makes insulting Mohammed a capital offence. She denies the charge. Last week, the Supreme Court reserved its ruling on her final appeal. If Bibi is sentenced to death, her last recourse to justice will be an appeal to Pakistan’s President Imran Khan for clemency. But Khan’s government is spearheading an international campaign to censor speech that Muslims find hurtful.

Islamists are advancing an illiberal agenda that could erode freedom of religion by censoring free speech. In 2012, US think tank Freedom House praised the Org­anisation of Islamic Co-operation for resiling from its campaign to stop defamation of religion. Critics believed the campaign was an attempt by Islamist groups to introduce a ban on blasphemy.

However, in May, the organisation appeared to revive the idea. It denounced intolerance against Muslims and held Western countries culpable. At the UN General Assembly meeting last month, the OIC pressed its case for states to prevent “defamation of Islam by incorporating legal and administrative measures which render defamation illegal and punishable by law”.

On September 28, OIC foreign ministers released a statement criticising “ridicule, insult, denig­ra­ting Islamic religious symbols and revered personalities, encouraging Islamophobia, and incitement to violence and hatred through negative and malicious depiction of Muslims”. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi addressed the General Assembly, urging members to “con­sider the issue of striking the right balance between freedom of expression and sentiments of a people”. He criticised free expres­sion, particularly illustrations of Mohammed that “hurt Muslim sentiments and sensibilities”.

No one has yet been executed under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, but the accused often suffer violence at the hands of Islamist mobs. Vigilantes attack people for perceived insults against Islam and unfavourable depictions of Mohammed. Moderate Muslims are not spared the violence. The Muslim governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was assassinated in 2011 after he criticised Pakistan’s blasphemy law and defended Bibi. The only Christian member of Pakistan’s cabinet, minority affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti, was assassinated soon afterwards. He had received a death threat in 2010 trying to reform blasphemy laws.

Censoring criticism of Islam is the last thing the Islamic world needs. Freedom of religion requires freedom of speech. The gross mistreatment of religious minorities in Islamist states is fuel­led by a sense of entitlement unchecked by public reason. It is empowered by political and religious authorities that reserve a special right of no offence for Muslims while censoring dissent and punishing freethinkers. The Islamist hierarchy prevents normal relations developing between Muslims and others. It is not, as Islamists contend, a path to peace but, rather, a guarantee of civil discord at the national and international levels. It prevents the intimate bonds of trust that enable the flourishing of society in friendship, love and family relations beyond the reach of the state. In a theocracy, such natural human relations are impeded by the requirement that citizens think like the state and relate to each other as its constituent parts.

Blasphemy is a primary instrument used by theocrats to prevent diversity of belief and substantial critique of orthodox thought. The Western experiment with theocracy failed eventually because citizens demanded freedom to think and speak in the interest of public reason and human progress. While the historical development is often depicted as a battle between the forces of atheistic reason and Christianity, the vanguard included devout Christians. An interesting example one can draw from history is Thomas Helwys. The unfortunate fellow was born centuries before his time with a will to truth matched only by a paucity of charm.

In the early 1600s, Helwys advanced a thesis on religious freedom that denied the divine right of kings and supported plurality of belief. The Helwys Society Forum notes he was unusual for advancing the cause of religious freedom as a common good. He wrote: “Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it does not appertain to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.” Unfortunately, he sent a copy of his pamphlet to King James with an inscription to die by: “… the king is a mortal man, and not God”. Alas poor Helwys, we knew him not.

If open society is to remain a central ideal of the modern West, it is our responsibility to safeguard the political and legal conditions that enable it to flourish. Free speech is inseparable from religious freedom in the Western tradition. Australian law should be reformed to reflect it in the interest of liberty, diversity of thought, good society and human progress.