Johann Hari

Last Saturday, in the drizzle and damp of Trafalgar Square, a bleak parable about how your free speech and mine are being eroded was acted out before an audience of tourists and pigeons. Some 600 people had gathered to defend the most basic right of all – the right to speak your mind. As befitted a rally in defence of freedom, it was gloriously messy and incoherent. The banners jabbing into the air declared: “Blasphemy is a victimless crime”, “I drew the Prophet Mohammed and all I got was this lousy fatwa”, and Voltaire’s line, “I do not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Communists mingled awkwardly with fascists, Lib Dem MPs spoke alongside defenders of George Bush. We argued, we sparred, we shouted. But we agreed on one thing: we must have the right to carry on yelling at each other in a democracy, without being tossed in jail or threatened with death for speaking our minds.

It might seem incredible we still have to say this in London in the year 2006, but the march was a response to the thump-thump of anti-free speech campaigners over the past year – and the proof of this ever-expanding threat came sooner than any of the marchers could have imagined. While Dr Evan Harris MP explained to the crowd, “We are facing at the moment the most concerted and multipronged assault on freedom of expression in this country since the Industrial Revolution,” the police swooped down to arrest one of the protestors. His “crime”? He was holding aloft a series of silly cartoons of the Mohammed that some fundamentalist Muslims have declared to be blasphemous. This ‘criminal’ was a 29 year-old man called Reza Moradi. He grew up in Iran under an Islamic fundamentalist tyranny, and he came to London as an asylum seeker because he wanted to be free to discuss, debate and, yes, mock religion. “The millions of Muslims who believe in freedom, the women who are oppressed… they do not feel this is offensive to them,” he said. Besides, he thought this was a free country where we could insult each others’ religion without fearing a knock at the door.

Reza’s friend – the great Iranian freedom fighter and feminist Maryam Namazie – immediately took to the podium. She said, “Whilst we may all be sometimes offended by some things, it is religion and the religious that are offended all of the time. They alone seem to have a monopoly on being offended, saying their beliefs are a no go area, and silencing all those who offend.” She began to pass the images of Mohammed around the Square. “Let’s all hold up these images. They can’t arrest all of us!” she declared. Still, Reza has received a summons for disturbing ‘public order’. Is it illegal to mock religion in this country now? If the police are going to be consistent, they should charge me, Peter Tatchell, Maryam and every other person at that rally, now. I await their summons for daring to speak freely at a free speech rally in a free country.

But the rally for free speech was not only assaulted by the police. It was attacked by a far-left group called the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who, in league with Islamic fundamentalists, are calling for an end to “the right to offend”. They spread weird disinformation that the “anti-Muslim rally” was organised by the disgusting BNP, and even attacked the Muslim asylum seekers who attended in nakedly racist terms as “Uncle Toms.” This group was humiliated when the two practicing Muslims who spoke from the platform received the biggest cheers of all, declaring that “Mohammed is big enough to take a joke.” Ali, a refugee from Saddam Hussein’s jails, said: “How can I accept a religion that is so cowardly it cannot be questioned? This Mohammed is not the one I accept. Don’t apologize. If you do, we as Muslims are losers.” Free speech defends Muslims – even fundamentalists – as much as it defends the rest of us. Peter Tatchell explained, “I support Iqbal Sacranie’s right to call my sexuality ‘diseased’. Why doesn’t he reciprocate my tolerance by supporting my right to criticise Islamic fundamentalism?”

As Reza was read his rights by the police, the black-British poet Labbi Sifre read from his latest work:

“Consider : Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Judaism, Hinduism,
the worship of the little green goblin from the planet absurdity
none of these is a country
none of these is an ethnicity
they are political philosophies
used to persuade or tell people
how they should live

In an age when the most powerful man on the planet (armed with weapons of mass
destruction) by his own admission believes he receives instruction directly from God

In an age when Christian believers in “Rapture” and Islamic believers in “the return of the hidden Imam” believe it right to speed us to salvation by promoting the chaos and destruction of the apocalypse

In such an age, not only do we have a right to challenge, criticize, caricature and satirize Muhammad, Jesus, Yahweh and other theistic concepts ... we have a duty to do so.”

Would somebody mind telling our police and our government?