Let’s be fair about freedom of speech

It cannot only be invoked when it suits you, writes Fazilla Farouk

ing for what’s left of his freedom because the US government seeks to gag him. Speaking truth to power is dangerous work for those seeking to hold to account the self-appointed caretakers of human rights and democracy in our world.

In the wake of the Paris massacre, in what can best be described as a bizarre application of logic, one right-wing British commentator has gone as far as blaming Assange and Snowden for the Paris attacks, claiming that the classified information leaked by the whistle-blowers puts Western populations at risk from jihadis.

On the contrary, many progressive and even some mainstream commentators argue far more convincingly that the roots of terrorism lie in the alienation and emasculation of young men who don’t fit the Western guise of humanity.

In fact, the slain Kouachi brothers who were responsible for the Paris massacre epitomise the alienation of marginalised youth in the West. Typically these are young men of colour. Frequently they live in ghettos. Routinely, they are spurned by Western middle classes and elites.

According to American expert on Middle East social movements Juan Cole the Kouachi brothers were orphaned at an early age, but never placed in a stable home. They eventually became trapped in an underworld of drug abuse and petty crime on the outskirts of Paris before turning to religion and finally being wooed by religious extremism. The Kouachi brothers’ race and ethnicity played a big role in how their lives unfolded as orphans in France, which is known to be particularly racist towards its citizens of Algerian descent.

Young men in the West such as the Kouachi brothers turn to terrorism because they feel abandoned by their countries and their fellow citizens on many levels. Western governments are not being held to account by large numbers of their citizens for their crimes against innocent civilian populations in Islamic countries. This remains a key factor driving disaffected European Muslim youth straight into the arms of dangerous extremist organisations like al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Sharif Kouachi, the younger of the brothers, specifically told interviewers it was what he saw on television about the US invasion of Iraq and the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib that motivated him to join an extremist group.

At the same time, a lethal cocktail of racial and class prejudice in Europe has established itself in the vile form of islamophobia. As Philip Stephens of the Financial Times put it, “Europe does not have ‘a Muslim problem’. It has failed to integrate properly many of its immigrants, and a big proportion of those left on the margins are Muslims.” Former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges puts it more bluntly: “When everybody is chanting, ‘Je suis Charlie Hebdo’, what they’re really chanting is we can’t stand dirty Arabs.”

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the mainstream focus on freedom of speech has emphasised a redacted version of the truth. As many have already observed, there is a double standard at play in the demand for free speech. Nevertheless, whilst freedom of speech advocates are preaching its inviolability, an opportunity is being presented to us all to demand that it is applied with principled consistency no matter whose sensibilities are being offended.

Manning, Snowden, Assange, and all those Muslim women whose identities are being scrubbed by the French niqab ban are depending on our vigilance to hold our governments to account for their responsibility to ensure that there is always a consistent and ethically rigorous application of the foundational principles of our democracies.

● Farouk is founder and executive director of The South African Civil Society Information Service and this article first appeared on its website.