The Tyranny of Silence

by Flemming Rose

  The world can be divided into two kinds of society, Sharansky suggested: free societies and fear societies.21 In free societies, conflicting opinions coexist, even ones that are opposed by the majority in power. In a fear society, that is prohibited. Societies that do not allow divergence of opinion and disagreement will inevitably be founded on fear and will never protect the rights of their citizens. Importantly, in the struggle for a free society, the existence of diversity of opinion is more significant than the specific nature of individual opinions:

  Although an enormous diversity of opinion was behind bars in the Gulag, dissidents shared one belief in common: we all wanted to live in a free society. And despite our sometimes contradictory visions of the future, the dissident experience enabled all of us to agree on what freedom meant. A society is free if people have a right to express their views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm.22

  Sharansky, a founding member of the Helsinki Group, one of history’s most successful human rights groups, a man who had endured nine years in a labor camp for his part in it, believed that the struggle for human rights had since been discredited. In his view, it had become removed from the vision of a free society. Now, the most brutal regimes spout about human rights even as they murder their own people or violate their rights across the board. As such, Sharansky wrote in his book, the link between democracy and liberty on the one hand, and peace and security on the other, had been undermined.

  The idea of human rights today has become synonymous with showing sympathy for the poor, the weak, and the infirm. The fundamental distinction between a free society and a fear society is thereby being dissolved. Sharansky perceived this in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which regards Israel as the world’s primary violator of human rights, although it is a free and democratic society surrounded by vicious dictatorships. The same pattern, Sharansky suggested, can be found in the annual reports of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, all of which devote more space to violations of human rights in Israel than they do to the entire Islamic world. The reason for that is that Israel is an open society in which information is freely available, whereas gathering exact and reliable information about what is happening in Saudi Arabia and Iran is impossible.

  Sharansky approached Amnesty International and suggested that it operate with categories of totalitarian, authoritarian, and democratic societies in the manner employed by Freedom House in its reports. Doing so would, in his view, allow information to be read within a context; it would allow the public to distinguish between countries in which human rights were violated daily by the very nature of the regime and countries in which violations occurred occasionally because of error and abuse of power. His suggestion, however, was declined on the grounds that the organization wished to remain nonpolitical, registering violations of human rights rather than focusing on the political systems of individual countries.

  The same logic—the wish to distinguish between the struggle for freedom and democracy and the struggle for human rights—is also the reason why Denmark, in the view of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, figures as one of the most racist countries in the world, Danish nongovernmental organizations having filed more complaints with the convention than any other country. In 2010, the figure was 20 out of a total of 45 cases.23 Yet Denmark consistently occupies a top-10 position in global surveys of freedom, tolerance, and equality.

  Sharansky suggests that in fear societies, that is, those prohibiting dissent, three categories of citizens emerge. One group comprises those loyal to the existing order insofar as their support is heartfelt. These are the true believers, a relatively small group growing smaller as citizens increasingly reject living in a society founded on fear and because freedom takes on universal appeal. Lack of freedom will moreover significantly weaken the competitive position of any society and in time will cause its decay and decline. An even smaller group of citizens comprises those who are prepared to confront the existing order, who refuse to live the lie regardless of the punishment they may endure. Those people are dissidents, freethinkers. They are a virus lethal to the fear society, a foreign body to be eradicated. Between those two minorities lies society’s largest category. Its members are not undyingly loyal, but they are prepared to live the lie. They are afraid to voice their opinion. Sharansky calls them double-thinkers. They live in a state of permanent tension between thought and action, between what they think for themselves and voice in close company and what they say at work and in public. Double-thinkers continually submit themselves to self-censorship. They are driven by the fear of what will happen if they speak freely.

  Sharansky explained:

  Even if you think freedom is for everyone, including those in the Islamic world, it doesn’t automatically imply that they prefer a Western model of democracy. But it does mean they want to live in a world without fear. When a person is forced to lie and to say something other than what he thinks and feels because he’s afraid of what’s going to happen if he tells the truth, his fear is controlling him. That’s not going to make anyone a loyal citizen. On the contrary, they’re going to become less and less loyal as time goes on. This is true of all dictatorships—the Soviet Union, Iran, Saudi Arabia, whatever. Just as the free world tried to keep on lying to itself about the Soviet Union, the West is lying to itself about the dictatorships in the Middle East. It’s convenient for them: confrontation is avoided, and no responsibility is assumed.

  I asked him if he thought the experiences of Soviet dissidents could be relevant to the Islamic world today.

  He replied:

  Indeed, and not only for the Islamic world. In my opinion, the lessons we learned then are of crucial importance for the whole world. Sadly, though, the free world doesn’t seem to want to know and learn from what we went through. When I met with the Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim, he criticized the United States for supporting Mubarak on the grounds that the Muslim Brotherhood is worse. Even though we’re politically opposed on many issues, his defense of human rights and freedom as a way of challenging the dictatorship reminds me of my own experience. We understand each other; I can acknowledge what he’s going through, his understanding of the strength and appeal of liberty. Unfortunately, though, his situation is a lot more difficult than ours, because we at least were in the public eye of the world whenever we were arrested. In the Islamic world, that’s not the way it is.

  Can dissidents of the Islamic world gain the same kind of significance as those in the Soviet Union, I asked, if they receive the support of the West?

  To begin with, the West could at least stop supporting dictatorships so openly. As soon as President George W. Bush put pressure on Mubarak in the wake of 9/11, civil society suddenly woke up. Suddenly, there were protests going on in the streets in Egypt, but as soon as the United States stopped being critical again, the regime threw Saad Eddin Ibrahim in jail and silenced a lot of other voices. It’s a difficult task, but to say beforehand that the Arab world can never become democratic is immoral and wrong. Nobody has done as much as the West to ensure that democracy enjoys such miserable conditions in the Arab world. After World War I, when nation-states were established in the region, the West went all out to support local dictators. They’d find a family in one country, another in a second, and then hand them the power. That’s how Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia came into being. So when the West says, “What are we to do? That’s just the way they are,” my answer is: give them a chance at least, starting, for example, by cutting off support to the dictators. Or at least make demands, ask for something in return. Instead, they reduce the whole issue to a choice between religious fanatics and secular dictators.

  When I wrote the brief introduction that accompanied Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the Muhammad cartoons, explaining our desire to use that project to investigate self- censorship, my point of departure was my encounter with the fear society that was the Sovi
et Union.24 Of course, as my piece suggested, I would never claim that free societies in the West were seriously threatened by the specter of Soviet-style fear. But the examples of recent self-censorship about Islam among museums and galleries, translators, artists, theaters, television stations, and comedians made me think of the kind of fear society Sharansky so precisely had described.

  In the Soviet Union, I had seen how, as those mechanisms spread through society, they eat away the soul and cause people to lose dignity and self-respect. Censorship, intimidation, and threats led to almost total self-censorship in the Soviet Union, so the authorities rarely needed to step in. People toed the line, adapting themselves and their behavior to the boundaries set for them by the regime. As Solzhenitsyn and others pointed out in their calls to challenge self-censorship and refuse to live the lie, the citizen was eventually held down, not only by the regime but also by himself.

  That is what I had in mind when I wrote the short article that accompanied the Muhammad cartoons, “It is no coincidence that people living in totalitarian societies often end up in jail for telling jokes. . . . It has not come to that here in Denmark, but we are on a slippery slope where no one can predict where self-censorship will end.”25

  9. Questioning the Harassers

  When the Cartoon Crisis was at its peak in January and February 2006, I recognized among critical Muslims and ex-Muslims in the West a pattern similar to the one I had seen among Soviet dissidents. I found it striking that so many Muslim dissidents, regardless of where they positioned themselves in the political spectrum, supported the cartoons’ publication. They viewed the drawings as input to the struggle for free speech and free religious exercise against totalitarian regimes and movements. Like the Soviet dissidents, they were speaking out against the fear society and warning of the consequences of bowing down to intimidation.

  That view was evident in a manifesto published in several European newspapers (including Jyllands-Posten) in February 2006, titled “Together Facing the New Totalitarianism.”1 That manifesto was a reaction against the violence and threats that had issued from publication of the cartoons. It was signed by prominent former Muslims and secular Muslims, all of whom had grown up in Muslim societies and were now critical of Islam as a political instrument of persecution wielded against freethinkers. All had personally received threats because of their opinions, though they assumed widely different political standpoints—from Iranian-born communist Maryam Namazie and left-wing activist Chahla Chafiq to the liberal Ayaan Hirsi Ali from Somalia; from practicing Muslim Irshad Manji to atheists Ibn Warraq and Salman Rushdie; from professors Antoine Sfeir and Mehdi Mozaffari to author Taslima Nasreen. In addition, the statement was signed by three French intellectuals: Bernard-Henri Lévy, Caroline Fourest, and Philippe Val. The latter two were from the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, a magazine that was sued in 2007 for reprinting the cartoons, only to be acquitted.

  The statement read:

  After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism. We writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all. Recent events, prompted by the publication of drawings of Muhammad in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field.

  Islamism is a reactionary ideology that kills equality, freedom, and secularism wherever it is present. Its victory can only lead to a world of injustice and domination: men over women, fundamentalists over others. On the contrary, we must ensure access to universal rights for the oppressed or those discriminated against.

  The statement concluded:

  We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia,” a wretched concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatization of those who believe in it. We defend the universality of the freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit can exist in every continent, towards each and every maltreatment and dogma. We appeal to democrats and free spirits in every country that our century may be one of light and not dark.

  As a reaction to the debate on the Muhammad cartoons, so-called Councils of Ex-Muslims were established in a number of European countries under the unifying banner “We have renounced religion!” The significance of this movement for people of Muslim background and their rights as individuals to convert, give up, or practice their religion can hardly be exaggerated, but it was also of considerable importance for Europe as a community upholding the freedom and rights of the individual. The Councils of Ex-Muslims began speaking out against the culture of fear in Muslim societies, challenging intimidation of the individual by Islamic movements and governments. Rejecting fear, they openly stepped forward and appeared, with their photographs, on websites and brochures for branches set up in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, and other countries. It was a direct challenge to the totalitarian society, which can only exist as long as its people submit to the intimidation that forms the basis of social control.2

  It reminded me of Charta 77, the Helsinki Groups, and other Eastern European human rights movements in the days when East and West subscribed to vastly differing views of the rights of the individual. In the capitalist West, importance was attached to civic rights, the right to free speech and free religious exercise, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement and economic freedom; the socialist countries highlighted social and economic rights, the right to work, the right to housing and to education. As such, two standards of human rights emerged, and in the clash between East and West many insisted on a balance between them. West attached importance to freedom, East insisted on equality, so the ideal was probably somewhere in between.

  It was a view rejected by the human rights movement behind the Iron Curtain. It did not accept differing conceptions of human rights, one socialist, one capitalist, another Asian, another Islamic. It held that only one set of human rights existed, that they issued from civic rights, and that as such they were natural. As citizens of socialist countries, members of the Helsinki Groups and of Charta 77 were claiming exactly the same rights as enjoyed by those in the West. This is what ex-Muslims are doing today when they step forward publicly to insist on their right to renounce their religion. They reject the notion of specifically Islamic human rights, as well as the idea that universal rights are a Western invention with no bearing on and without validity in other cultures.

  A number of Islamic countries punish apostates by death or imprisonment. Even in the West, where legislation is secular and Islamic law has no validity, many former Muslims, or Muslims whose opinions are taken to be deviant, feel intimidated and afraid to speak their minds. That fear was the reason Ibn Warraq in 1995 published his bestseller Why I Am Not a Muslim under a pseudonym. Politicians, activists, writers, scholars, and artists of Muslim background have all received death threats for publicly criticizing their religion, for leaving it, or for practicing it idiosyncratically. Women especially are subjugated.3

  Subjugation of women was exactly what the short film Submission, by Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and feminist former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was about.4 It contains monologues of Muslim women addressing Allah on the subject of abuse and oppression. The characters say that if religious submission causes them such pain and suffering without intervention from Allah, then they may decide to submit themselves no longer. One is lashed for fornicating, a second is married off to a man she despises, a third is beaten by her husband, and a fourth is cast out by her father when he discovers that she has been raped by her brother. The perpetrators of that violence justify their misdeeds by referencing verses of the Koran painted on the women’s bodies.

  The film cost van Gogh his life, when he was murdered by a Muslim who believed the film had insulted Islam. His assassin declared in a letter addressed to Hirsi Ali and left at the scene t
hat she would be next. She did not, however, submit. She published a number of books about her own story and her experiences in Muslim societies, and described how, following 9/11, she experienced a personal crisis when she realized that the terrorists had been driven by their faith in Islam and the Prophet Muhammad—a faith she, at least nominally, shared. She pored through the Koran and found that a number of passages could clearly be used to justify the attack. She then broke with Islam, a decision that involved a painful conflict with her parents and close family. Reading a book while on holiday in Greece, she understood that she no longer needed to believe in any God.

  “One night in that Greek hotel I looked in the mirror and said out loud, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ I said it slowly, enunciating it carefully, in Somali. And I felt relief,” she wrote.5

  Her books became international bestsellers. Infidel, published in English in 2007, and Nomad: from Islam to America, in 2010, made Ayaan Hirsi Ali an influential voice, perhaps the world’s most prominent ex-Muslim.

  In November 2007, I interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, about her views on the Muhammad cartoons. I was in New York to discuss my own book project with a number of American publishers. I found a great deal of reluctance; I kept hoping that was not a fear of stirring up trouble with Islam. But the thought gained strength a few months later, when Random House canceled its planned publication of a historical novel about the Prophet Muhammad’s child bride, Aisha, though it had already paid a $100,000 advance to the author, Sherry Jones. Then, in 2009, Yale University Press, which was publishing Professor Jytte Klausen’s book The Cartoons That Shook the World, decided to remove from the book all images of the Prophet—including the original page of cartoons in Jyllands-Posten and historical images from Muslim and non-Muslim sources.