On Friday 5 January, a twenty-seven year old Muslim from Birmingham, Umran Javed, was found guilty of soliciting murder and stirring up racial hatred during the Danish cartoon protests in London. It is alleged that Javed led a 300-strong crowd of demonstrators in London, chanting such comments as "Denmark, you will pay, with your blood, with your blood, Bomb, bomb Denmark".
While this rare case appears to be justified to a jury at the Old Bailey, the policy of a modern government should maintain a view on the absolute liberty of opinion and public protest, since it is only in the rarest of cases such as this - in which one has encroached upon the liberty of others - should any intervention be sought by law or parliament, writes James McConalogue.
The liberal-conservative framework stands in sharp distinction to the New Labour policy, which has only sought to defend the freedom of expression in rhetoric but has, in reality, actively suppressed the liberty of expression in Britain the best example of this had been Tony Blairs failed attempt at the suppression of free speech in attempting to pass The Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, regardless of dissent in both the Commons and Lords. The active suppression of the liberty of opinion in Europe has come at a time in which EU-led multiculturalist governmental intervention (in the post-9/11 global atmosphere) has accorded legislative sympathies to radical Islamists and other minority religious groups, often to the detriment of public debate.
A Conservative framework
It was in late 2005 that the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, originally published a series of cartoons portraying the prophet Muhammad as a religious charlatan. (The reproduced cartoons can be seen at The Brussels Journal: www.brusselsjournal.com). The cartoons were subsequently republished across mainstream European newspapers, although the cowardice of the British press was exemplary, with only a few publications choosing to present even one of the caricatures. At the time, the cartoons seemed to have caused such offence to the global Muslim community that verbal outrages such as the one involving Mr. Javed became almost commonplace in London.
Why then, one might ask, has the political and legal system that upheld the freedom of expression in one case that of the Danish cartoons, for example denied the freedom of protest on the other? After all, it was the reliable Home Secretary, Mr. John Patten, who responded during the Rushdie affair on 4th July 1989 through a letter to British Muslims:
The same freedom which has enabled Muslims to meet, march and protest against the book also preserves any authors right to freedom of expression for so long as no law is broken. To rule otherwise would be to chip away the fundamental freedom on which out democracy is built. That is why we have no power to intervene with publishers of to have The Satanic Verses removed from bookshop shelves. Nor would we seek or want any such power.
The defence offered by John Patten under the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, makes the predicament of each individual clear: the freedom to protest and the freedom to express oneself are one and the same freedom. However, does this not still leave us with an unhealthy imbalance of freedom(s) and an even greater sense of irony?
To many, there is a huge sense of irony and injustice in this judgement of Javed: his speeches and verbal protest, calling for the murder of Americans and Danes, outside the Danish embassy, have been legally suppressed and punished while the freedom to publish the Muhammad cartoons amounted to nothing more than a severe kind of religious satire. Thus, while one form of free expression offered a radical artwork in a public space of true diversity (i.e. within a variety of newspapers) within the remit of basic liberties, the other form amounted to a tragic encroachment upon the individual liberties of others. In sum, one amounts to a radical opinion, the other a threat to national security.
When the protesting speech directly encroaches upon the liberties of others in such a manner that it is considered to solicit murder, we might once again turn to Pattens speech, which defends the freedom
so long as no law if broken. Of course, it is for the court of law to prove or disprove the manner in which a speech may impinge upon the life, liberty or property of another.
In British political thought, it is John Stuart Mill who writes On Liberty in 1859 to claim that the most fundamental principle of a free and tolerant society is the absolute right to the freedom of opinion. Mill was also cautious to declare that the only exception in which this freedom might be limited is when it imposes severe harm onto others yet, this is a rare event. Obviously, it was felt in the trial of the Danish protester that the protesters freedom to express himself posed a severe and grave threat to others (e.g. potentially murderous), clearly not conducive with the liberties of others.
Defending the freedom of speech
It is important to recognise in this recent legal battle that even though Umrad Javeds protests may have been a reaction to the publication of the Danish cartoons, the cases are simply not comparable. Perhaps a clearer and comparable case of extreme political opinion is that of Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party (BNP). Nick Griffin criticized Islam as a vicious wicked faith in an undercover BBC documentary in January 2004 and was brought to court over the incitement of racial hatred. He was later acquitted in 2006, since it transpired that Griffin had done no more than criticize Islam as a body of ideas and not caused harm to members of the population. In this sense, Griffin was free to express his views since he did not impose harm onto others, and his liberty to do so was perfectly congruous with the liberty of others to express their opinions. That is not to defend the character or politics of Griffin or the BNP but to recognise that there is a legal public space in which all are equally free to articulate their views so long as the law is not broken.
Accordingly, the British government might be best placed to maintain a view on the absolute liberty of opinion and verbal protest, since only in rare exceptions such as the case of Umran Javed in which an expression physically impinges upon the lives and liberties of others should any intervention be sought by law or parliament. This is a point which must be rallied in both Britain and Europe, since an active intervention in the liberty of opinion in Europe is a growing consequence of EU-led multiculturalist governmental intervention (in a post-9/11 global atmosphere) which has granted legal sympathies and political loyalties to radical Islamists and minority groups, often to the detriment of national public debate.