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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A tradition of repression
By Ahmed El-Baghdadi*
There is no solid legacy of freedom of opinion as a human right in the Arab heritage. Historical sources contain the occasional pertinent orally transmitted narrative, but the authenticity of such narratives is not corroborated. While there is reference to this freedom in the writings of the Abbasid era, its existence was vulnerable to the will of the ruling princes and sultans, a fact for which the execution of Al-Hallaj (857-922) in Baghdad for blasphemous utterances, and the burning of the books of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126-'98) should serve as a poignant reminder.
Because the concept of freedom of opinion as a fundamental right is absent from our Arab and Islamic heritage, it has remained subject to the whims of the political regime. Although this freedom has been enshrined in Arab national constitutions (whether because of Western influence, the desire to emulate the West, or sincere conviction in its value), realities have worked to subvert its force through laws restricting intellectual freedom or pressures exerted by regressive social forces.
Freedom of opinion is integral to political plurality and the acceptance of the other. In societies like those of the Arab world, where religion plays a powerful and pervasive role, it is difficult to achieve tolerance of the opinions of others. Religious strictures sanctifying the discrimination between men and women (the concept of men's custodianship of women confers an inferior status to women), between Muslims and non-Muslims (the jizya or head tax to be paid by the "People of the Book" imparts a subject status to non-Muslims), and between the freedman and the bondsman continue to inhibit free thought in areas where the ultimate criterion is the scripture.
It follows, therefore, that the growing influence of fundamentalism in Arab societies and upon Arab governments is naturally accompanied by a rise in the antagonism to intellectual freedoms in general. With the attendant accusations of heresy and apostasy at hand in any discussion of religious issues, it is no longer possible to speak of freedom of opinion as an inalienable human right, unrestricted by considerations of religious affiliation, custom and tradition, or inherited norms.
Why is it that Arab societies, as embodied by both their ruling institutions and their people, have such a negative attitude toward intellectual freedoms? Certainly this subject has not been accorded sufficient study until now.
The relatively large margin of intellectual freedoms the Arab world enjoyed from the 1920s to the 1970s has shrunk considerably. To a large extent, the failure of Arab political regimes and social institutions effectively to promote intellectual freedoms and general public awareness thereof is responsible for this trend. While political regimes "imposed" the freedom of expression, which is to say that they permitted intellectuals to voice their views on various religious or social issues within certain confines set by the regime, the people had no say in this process. More fundamentally, regimes never instituted systematic programmes to raise public awareness about democratic freedoms and practices, nor have they allowed for the democratisation of society through the actual implementation and enforcement of relevant constitutional provisions.
As a result, Arab peoples may be familiar with democracy in the form of parliamentary bodies and political parties, but they have no awareness of the underlying concepts of civil and intellectual freedoms. In fact, I will venture that the overwhelming majority of the Arab people have never read their national constitutions and, therefore, have no conception of their constitutionally guaranteed rights and duties. More ominously, it would appear that Arab peoples today no longer attach sufficient value to these national constitutions; the Islamists' famous slogan, "The Qur'an is our constitution," has put paid to that.
We cannot deny that the rise of Arab nationalist thought and ideology helped generate considerable liberalism and open-mindedness among the intellectual elite, but not at the level of popular culture. The Arab defeat of June 1967 struck a severe blow to this trend of thought, as Islamist thinkers moved to "convince" the masses that all these catastrophes were befalling them because they had strayed from the true path of religion. Arab liberal thought was portrayed as tainted by Western secularist ideology, which was construed as inherently heretic and, therefore, anti-Islamic and to be abhorred. With this appeal, Islamism made sweeping inroads among various social strata, particularly among the poor who have little concern for intellectual freedoms, since these have no immediate bearing on their day-to-day life.
Since liberal intellectuals are the only ones capable of countering and refuting the oppressive dogma of the Islamist movement, they are the obvious targets of any drive to stifle the ability to voice one's views in writing and in debate. The Islamists' weapons in this campaign have ranged from accusations of ideological heresy to social ostracism and, finally, physical assault and murder. The threat to intellectual freedom is all the more palpable in view of the disposition to violence inherent in Islamist thought since Sayed Qutb established the principle of jihad against "heretical" Muslims who do not believe in hakimiya (divine dominion on earth).
But are the Islamists alone to be held responsible for this state of affairs? Sadly, legislation in the Arab world has furnished the Islamist trend with the legal tools to suppress freedom of opinion. When the law is invoked for this purpose, there is little room for objection, for do we not all appeal for the rule of law? All Arab regimes, without exception, have sought to vaunt their credentials as protectors of the faith by passing a battery of press and publication laws, or laws penalising the "defamation" of the divinity of the prophets (in Kuwait there is a proposal to add the Companions of the Prophet and the Mothers of the Faithful to the list). Such laws have flung open the doors to a frenzied search in the articles, stories or research of particular writers for any substance that can be decontextualised and distorted with the sole purpose of entrapping the writer in the clutches of the law. The regimes themselves, fearful of laying themselves open to charges of transgressing against religion, have done nothing to curtail this phenomenon, epitomised recently in Egypt by the outcry surrounding the publication of Haydar Haydar's A Banquet for Seaweed.
Neither freedom of opinion nor any other intellectual freedom has ever constituted a dimension of Arab society and culture. Censorship of publications and artistic productions and laws restricting freedom of opinion are tangible proof that these societies are narrow-minded or lack the desire -- not merely the capacity -- to accept the opinions of others. Arab peoples believe, as the Islamists would have it, that the crisis of their societies resides in alienation from religion, and are hence haunted by the spectre of religious sanctions and prohibitions.
Some may ask whether I believe that freedom of opinion should be entirely unrestricted. To this, my answer is an unequivocal yes. If this freedom is not absolute, it cannot exist. The only punishment facing a writer who allegedly defames religion should come from society, through the boycott of his works or through direct debate, in order to prove the fallacy of his ideas and to grant him the opportunity to retract them voluntarily. Rabble-rousing, death threats, book burning and the promulgation of laws targeting particular bodies of opinion can mean only one thing. They tell us that the Arab nation is incapable of rational debate, and is therefore a nation disposed to terrorism.
*The writer is professor of political science at Kuwait University.
