Threatened
Dutch-Iranian Dissident: Attacking Free Speech A Core of Terrorism
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
May 1, 2015
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Afshin Ellian
has a thing or two to say about terrorism.
He also has a few things to say about Islam – specifically political
Islam – but many don't particularly like to hear it. In fact, the threats
against his life from radical Muslims, particularly in the Netherlands,
where the Iranian dissident now lives, have become so frequent that at
least one bodyguard accompanies him anywhere he goes.
But Ellian, a professor of jurisprudence at the University of Leiden,
also knows a thing or two about freedom: he has spent his life pursuing it
since his days as a student in Iran, where in 1978 he took part in the
uprising against the Shah. After the revolution, the Ayatollah banned
political discourse; threatened with execution, Ellian fled the country. He
settled briefly in Kabul before further ideological conflicts led him to
escape again, arriving as a political refugee in the Netherlands in 1989.
Now the human rights and counter-terrorism expert works valiantly to
protect the freedom that he so long fought for – even as he finds the most
precious quality of that freedom itself now under threat: the principle of
free speech.
It is this which recently brought him to the Nieuwspoort, a debate
center for journalists and politicians in The Hague, a city not
coincidentally known as "the International City of Justice and of
Peace." The occasion: the presentation of his latest book, simply and
appropriately titled Freedom of Speech Under Attack.
In the post-Charlie Hebdo era, it is a book that defines our
time.
Speaking to assembled press and his guest of honor, Flemming Rose – the publisher of Jyllands Posten and the renowned
"Danish Mohammed cartoons" who also lives under guard – Ellian is
clearly unbowed by the threats and attacks on his own freedom. To the
contrary, he speaks the words many would prefer went entirely unsaid:
Europe must defend itself against radical Islam. To do so, its strongest
weapon, stronger than arms, stronger than money, is the protection of free
speech.
Yet at the same time, the very principle of free speech is being abused
by jihadists to destroy the democracies from which it was created, says
Ellian. Recruiters for jihad, those who threaten apostates and Jews and who
call for violence against the West rely precisely on the principles of free
speech to spread their messages of hate. Consequently, he says,
"democracy as a form of society must be understood in terms of a
militant system. Whenever democracy is threatened by violence, it has the
right to defend itself violently. The alternative would be suicide."
And freedom, he pronounces, "is no suicide pact."
Ellian's own confrontation with radical Islam in Europe dates back to
2000, when an article he wrote against the Prophet Mohammed's orders to
destroy poets led to death threats. (In addition to holding graduate degrees
in philosophy and law, Ellian is a celebrated poet.) More threats followed,
chiefly after the murder of Theo van Gogh in November 2005 by Muslim
extremist Mohammed Bouyeri. Immediately after the killing, Ellian called on
other Western intellectuals to "put radical Islam on the surgical
table" and to fight back against politically correct censorship
because, as he says now, "whenever a society applies self-censorship
out of fear from terrorism, freedom dissipates.
Yet days after the presentation of Ellian's new book, six members of PEN
America, the prestigious organization for authors and writers that defines
itself as a leader in the defense of free expression, called for a boycott against the association, citing
its decision to honor the magazine Charlie Hebdo with its Toni and James
C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage award. When I tell him of this,
Ellian's fury sizzles through the phone.
"If you start with saying they shouldn't make the cartoons,"
he fumes, "you may as well say they shouldn't write novels. After all,
what have the Jews done? Why are they killed? Would the writers say
they shouldn't have been Jews? A writer who cannot tolerate such a prize is
not worthy of the name 'writer.'"
Indeed, it is precisely in the fight against terrorism, says Ellian,
that the debate over free speech becomes most crucial – and where writers
and intellectuals should speak out the most loudly.
"We in the West have the possibility of discussion," he says,
"the ability to talk about morals and religion. We can't take on the
model of the Islamic world. To the contrary: they need more freedom. We
don't need less."
After all, it is just that inherent intolerance for debate that led to
the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, the threats against people
like Salman Rushdie and Flemming Rose and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who, not
coincidentally, studied under Ellian in Leiden) – and, of course, against
Ellian himself.
That's not to say that free speech has no limits, Ellian cautions, and
this is what his book sets out precisely to address: what are the limits on
expression and on speech, not only for philosophers and novelists, but also
for jihadists? What can they say? What can they not say? Should speech that
encourages hate and discrimination be criminalized? What about blasphemy?
And what of the spread, particularly on the Internet, of anti-Semitism, and
efforts to recruit others for jihad?
"For me," says Ellian, "the limit comes at the point of
calling for violence. But not like in France, where they have criminalized
'glorification of terror.' In my opinion, that goes too far." He
recently filed a civil complaint against Shabir Burhani, alias
Maiwand Al Afghani, a former spokesperson for Sharia4Belgium, alleging
threats and the promotion of violence. (Burhani, then a student at the
University of Leiden, was also accused of threatening Ellian directly in 2013. He has
denied the charges.)
In the end, it comes down to a simple, basic principle: that freedom
cannot be used for the purpose of limiting freedom – a form, as Ellian
suggests, of suicide. But in the face of political Islam and Islamic
terrorism, it can neither be absolute. "This," he says, "is
the core of terrorism. Terror wants to bring us back to 1,500 years ago.
They want us to no longer write. But if you say, 'you can't talk about
Islam,' if you tell us to hold our mouths still, then terrorism has
won."
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands.
Related Topics: Free
Speech, Islamist
Censorship | Abigail
R. Esman, Afshin
Ellian, Freedom
of Speech Under Attack, Charlie
Hebdo, Flemming
Rose, Jyllands
Posten, PEN
America, Shabir
Burhani, Sharia4Belgium,
Free
Speech, Islamist
Censorship
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