LAST MONDAY, the Muslim Students Association kicked off their awareness week, nobly attempting to bring light on the completely misunderstood religion of Islam.Unfortunately, misconceptions and ignorant interpretations pervasively characterize a ubiquitous but accepted Islamophobia in the western world. But as the MSA's event on Monday demonstrated, it is far more unfortunate that Islam's most vocal defenders seem to also display a never-ending supply of incompetence. The MSA's guest on Monday, Imam Siraj Wahajj, served as the avatar of said incompetence when he spent the evening harassing free speech, buttressing rather than addressing the stereotypes that plague contemporary Muslims.
Wahajj rightly emphasized the legality of debate over religion but, perhaps in contradiction with this, provided a three-pronged test for assessing freedom of speech: First, is it legal? Second, is it moral? and third, is it wise? This test can only be described as ridiculous.
Is it legal? This implies that content-based speech could in fact be illegal. It cannot, unless one desires to trade liberty for tyranny. Deciding what content can be banned inherently values the subjectivity of decision-makers over the rights of the silenced minority. Fortunately, such restrictions have been made impossible in the United States by countless Supreme Court rulings.
Is it moral? Very few people, if anyone at all, disagree that we should all live lives in accordance with morality. How to define these codes in terms of expression cannot ever be determined by a government acting under the thinly woven mask of paternalism. "Y Tu Mama Tambien," a Mexican film reminiscent of the French classic, "Jules et Jim," depicts nudity and spends much time engaging in what many would call "immoral" expression; however, the film presents real life problems, political commentary and a valuable analysis of the Mexican socioeconomic classes. To suppress the movie because of supposed immoral content would be the equivalent of suppressing the (extremely) effective means by which its themes were delivered. The point is simple: The mask of moral paternalism by which free speech infringements are attempted, even if woven with the finest threads of rhetoric and benign intention, cannot but barely begin to hide the putrid face of tyranny that inevitably lingers beneath.
Is it wise? This question is subject to even more scrutiny than the question of morality. Not only is it as subjective, but it is more restrictive. A good majority of speech that I hear on a day to day basis, like that of Wahajj's, cannot possibly be classified as wise. In 1993, when Omar Abdel-Rahman was arrested for taking part in the World Trade Center bombings, Wahajj served as a character witness, testifying to Rahman's good character. In my view, serving as a character witness for a guilty terrorist is not only unwise speech, but a downright stupid decision. However, I respect Wahajj's freedom to make unwise (but legal) decisions, create unwise approaches to free speech, and unwisely hurt the Muslim community by emphasizing a Danish cartoon rather than real issues. My response to his dogmatic incompetence is exactly what it should be: more speech.
Wahajj and the MSA seem to agree that the Danish cartoonist should never have clicked his pen into action. But this is not appropriate, nor is it helpful. Muslims desperately need more free speech, not less. Professors in Middle Eastern universities perpetually face jail time and even death for uttering anything deemed "immoral" or "unwise" by their arbitrary governments. At the same time, the suppression of their speech has come at the cost of better policies: The people of these nations are impoverished and oppressed; moving upwards socially (without prostituting yourself to the repressive regimes) can be likened to climbing up a greasy fishing line.
Unfortunately, many of even the wisest westerners have committed the logical faux pas of equating correlation with causation: They think Islam is inherently tyrannical and thus explain the contemporary status of Muslim countries. Rather than harassing speech, the MSA should have provided speech debunking such misconceptions. Power corrupts whites, blacks, Muslims, Christians, Jews and all other people equally. And whether that power is, as its basis, claiming divine right through Christianity, the will of Allah through Islam, or "objective correctness" through science, it is inevitably being neither Christian nor Muslim nor scientific, but simply tyrannical. It is thus unchecked power and poor governmental structures, rather than Islam, that is the enemy.
That most westerners expediently and wrongly blame Islam for the Middle East's problems is the issue that the MSA desperately needed to engage. Instead, when hosting an extremist and harassing speech, the MSA chose to buttress the existing stereotype of Muslims: They value Islamic tyranny over liberty. Wahajj did emphasize that the speech, even if unwise and immoral, is legal, but this is not my point. The swords that enforce arbitrary power, and not the ink that criticizes them (however inappropriately) are the enemies and should thus be the focus of criticism. My conviction here is not limited in aim to the MSA: Whether Muslim or Christian, decidedly atheistic or simply agnostic, an enemy of free speech is an enemy of mine.
Sina Kian's columns appear Tuesdays in the Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at skian@cavalierdaily.com
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