Your freedom ends at my nose

Notions of freedom have been widely trumpeted yet again, in the aftermath of the killings of a dozen people in Paris in an incident that has been widely condemned. The usual heroes and principles of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution have all been wheeled out again, even by those who have little understanding of either. 

But there has been another casualty, too, which has not been mourned, even without reference to the haloed names of French libertarians: civility. 

In truth, the French nation’s sudden outburst of self-righteousness over freedom of expression rings a little hollow, given that these are the same champions who enforce laws prohibiting any questioning of the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis, on the basis that it smacks of anti-Semitism, and have passed numerous measures against the freedoms of French Muslims, such as banning the wearing of hijab in public offices.

The Americans say, “Your freedom ends where my nose begins” or “Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins”. And when one’s nose is bruised by another’s insistence on freedom, how should we react? By an even stronger blow that gives a lot more than a bloody nose? This is where notions of civility come in. 

The attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices was an appalling crime, of course, and the deaths of the 12 victims (and the suffering of all those wounded or traumatised) tragic for all involved. But it cannot be understood only in terms of freedom of speech. 

This tragedy – or something like it – was made inevitable by an earlier failure, that of civility. It is this that must govern the conduct of people towards each other, however much they may differ in terms of beliefs and values. 

When simple principles of civility fail to prevent the deliberate targeting by one party of the deepest-held beliefs and taboos of another – particularly when the latter is already suffering economic marginalisation and social alienation – some reaction is bound to follow. 

Here in Malaysia, the targeting of a small political comic has been greeted with suitably comical fervour, with French phrases tripping off numerous tongues.

More notably, the words of Voltaire, the French philosopher best known for his almost Abrahamic vow to give up his life in defence of freedom of expression, have been parroted with full fervour, ignoring the context of Voltaire’s statement in the late 1700s, an era marked by the tyranny of priests and religious clergy. 

Indeed, Voltaire himself once wrote a play insulting Prophet Muhammad, to symbolise his contempt for religions in general. 

But Voltaire’s attitude to Islam and the Prophet is by no means typical of the Western intelligentsia, particularly the French. Even at that time, his crude writings on Muhammad were countered by Napoleon Bonaparte, and some decades later, the French philosopher de Lamartine wrote a glowing tribute of Muhammad. 

More recently, many Europeans in the Western intellectual tradition have shown their respect for the man who inspired the world's fastest growing religion.

German scholar Annemarie Schimmel has written on the intense respect for Muhammad in her writings, to the extent of empathising with the outrage of the Muslim world against Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. 

More recently, American journalist Lesley Hazleton published a biography of the Prophet, suspending all religious emotions, to find out who was this man revered and loved by Muslims of all types – the praying, the non-praying, the nominal, the staunch, the drinking – and who remain a central figure 1,500 years after his death.

The contribution of Charlie Hebdo and its like, by contrast, made mockery of this Western tradition of civility in intellectual discourse, even when dealing with people whose beliefs one does not share.

And this despite themselves recognising that freedom of expression must have limits: in 2008, it fired a cartoonist who drew an image linking the son of then-president Nicholas Sarkozy to Jewish interests.

So what do we do when insults are responded with violence? Do we declare a “World Cartoonist Day”, as one local cartoonist, again rather comically, suggested? 

By the same logic, if a group of Chinese Malaysians barge into the office of a loud-mouthed Malay right-wing NGO one day and took down a dozen of their members for all their insults, do we declare a “World NGOs Day” to show our contempt for such violence?

While the killings should be rightly condemned, the fact is such a violent reaction is made possible only because of the failure, nay the hypocrisy, of the French legal system, and indeed the wider establishment. 

Nowhere is this hypocrisy more pronounced than in the fact that this same system criminalises denial of the Holocaust, leading to what is known as the Garaudy affair in the late 1990s, when a French professor was charged in court and convicted all because he questioned the veracity of Holocaust proponents. No freedom of expression then, and few appeals to the spirit of Voltaire. 

Let us be truthful to ourselves, and call a spade a spade. Freedom of expression is all good. It shouldn’t need to be legally regulated, for defining it with the precision required for legal purposes opens another can of worms. 

But it isn’t and cannot be infinite. It must stop where someone’s nose begins. Even if it is not my nose. Even if I don’t understand or like the person whose nose it is. 

Without such basic civility, trouble is inevitable, and self-righteous indignation after the trouble erupts downright hypocrisy. – January 10, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.