Charlemagne

Free speech under threat

What Britain's debate about the Islamic veil has in common with France's
bill on Armenian genocide

In 1999 Jack Straw, then Britain's home secretary, was attacked for being rude
about an ethnic minority. There were demands for criminal investigations,
appeals to various commissions and public agencies, a fevered debate over
whether Mr Straw was racist. On that occasion, he was accused of demeaning
gypsies by saying that people who masqueraded as travellers seemed to think
they had a right to commit crimes. In the past few weeks Mr Straw, now leader of
the House of Commons, has triggered a similar response by arguing that the
Muslim veil (i.e. the full, face-covering niqab) is an unhelpful symbol of
separateness. This week he won the backing of his boss, Tony Blair.

These episodes are reminders not that Mr Straw is hostile to minorities (he isn't)
but that any debate in Europe about minority rights soon degenerates into a fight
between self-proclaimed community leaders, public agencies, the police, courts
and the law. It may be hard to reconcile militant Islam with secular Europe. But
Europeans have fostered a culture, legal system and set of institutions that
have a chilling effect on public debate, making it hard to discuss the
subject honestly.
The starting-point of this failure, argues Gerard Alexander, at the American
Enterprise Institute, is a surprising one: Holocaust-denial laws. At the height of
this year's row over cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, devout
Muslims argued that, if it was right to limit free speech in one area, it was right to
do it in another. They wanted insulting the Prophet to be made a crime.
Restrictions on free speech are always undesirable. Holocaust-denial laws may
have been justified in Germany and Austria because they helped to stop
something even worse: a revival of Nazism. Yet that is surely no longer a risk in
either country. And it certainly does not justify the extension of such laws to other
countries where there is no real threat of Nazism, such as France and Belgium;
or the adoption of “hate speech” legislation that has nothing to do with Nazism; or
the interpretation of laws against incitement to violence in a way that constrains
speech which merely causes offence.
The most vivid example of the creeping extension of Holocaust-denial laws has
come in the French National Assembly, which last week voted for a bill to make
denial of the genocide of Armenians in Turkey during the first world war a
criminal offence. The political context for this was not just vociferous lobbying by
Armenians in France but also growing hostility among voters to the idea of
Turkish membership of the European Union. To appeal to such voters, the
assembly proved ready to place restrictions on one of the most fundamental of all
freedoms, that of speech (though in fact the bill is unlikely to become law).
This is a perfectly logical extension of a slew of laws imposing free-speech
restrictions to suppress racial, ethnic and religious hatred. Indeed, it may be an
offence to deny the Armenian genocide in France already, because its
Holocaust-denial law was extended in 1990 to cover all crimes against humanity.
Bernard Lewis, an American historian, was condemned by a French court in
1995 under this law. Britain also has laws against incitement to racial hatred;
last January it tried but failed to extend them to religious hatred. On the
face of it, then, it does not seem outlandish for Muslims to demand that Islam be
equally “protected” under speech-restricting laws.

Laws against racial and religious hatred are often defended on the ground
that they are directed at racists and xenophobes. Certainly, they have been
used against such people. In 2004 Belgium's highest court found a Flemish far-
right party, the Vlaams Blok, guilty of racism, forcing it to disband (though it
regrouped under a new name). But such laws have not been restricted to the far
right; they have been used against pillars of society. Mr Lewis is a frequent guest
of both the Jordanian royal family and the White House. Last year, a French
court found Le Monde, the grande dame of French newspapers, guilty of inciting
hatred against Jews. Oriana Fallaci, one of Italy's best-known journalists, was
awaiting trial for offending Islam when she died. Such lawsuits do not
discourage racists; they discourage free speech.

As always happens, an industry grows up around any such laws (and

lawsuits), dedicated to policing, sustaining and extending the legal framework.
The industry consists of government bodies, such as Britain's Commission for
Racial Equality, which investigate complaints; official agencies, such as France's
Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel, which monitor the media for racist remarks;
and any number of informal organisations that represent minorities and win their
spurs by doing battle with the political establishment.
Laws against incitement to hatred tend to hamper openness of debate because
they are too easily interpreted as laws against causing offence. The placing of
sanctions on “offensive” speech risks conflating two different things:
bigoted speech and constructive criticism. The big danger is that, in the
name of stopping bigots, one may end up stopping all criticism.
The outcome is an odd combination, whereby Europe simultaneously
suppresses but also radicalises its debate about Islam. Acts of self-
censorship co-exist with fevered argument. Spain's folklore festivals may rid
themselves of medieval depictions of Muhammad and the Deutsche Oper in
Berlin may cancel a production for fear of Islamist reprisals. But at the same time,
extremists exploit arguments over the veil in Britain or over the pope's
reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor.
The good news is that politicians have begun to recognise the risk of stifling
debate. Germany's Angela Merkel criticised the opera house for self-censorship.
Most of Mr Straw's cabinet colleagues, and not only Mr Blair, have rallied to
support him. They are right to. It is hard to integrate Muslims into European
society. Restricting free speech makes it even harder.
From the print edition: Europe

Notes: Underlined words to translate and/or find synonyms

Bolded words and phrases to explain

Consider answering these questions:

1. What is UK Home Secretary’s portfolio?

2. What was the debate about Muslim veil about? Was it only limited to the
UK?
3. Please, explain this sentence: “Europeans have fostered a culture,
legal system and set of institutions that have a chilling effect on
public debate, making it hard to discuss the subject honestly”
4. What are “Holocaust denial laws”?
5. In which cases are these laws desirable? Why?
6. Why was the bill on denial of the genocide of Armenians in Turkey
considered by French parliament? Did it ever become a law? Explore.
7. What are laws against racial and religious hatred targeted at?
8. Who do these laws discourage?
9. What does “chill effect” mean in English?
10. What kind of “industry” does the author refer to?
11. Please discuss: “The placing of sanctions on “offensive” speech
risks conflating two different things: bigoted speech and
constructive criticism”
12. Explore what this is: “Pope's reference to a 14th-century Byzantine
emperor”.
13. Why did a)Tony Blair and b)Angela Merkel respectively address this issue
of incitement of hate?