Jo Glanville on the recent controversy surrounding the forthcoming publication of The Jewel of Medina, a historical novel about Mohammed’s wife Aisha:
This whole affair – from Random House’s decision to drop the book, to the attack this weekend – is evidence of a worrying trend. Twenty years since The Satanic Verses was published, in the 60th-anniversary year of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, we are facing a crisis for free expression. Yet the threat comes not only from those who commit acts of violence, but from those who ostensibly support human rights.
Respect for religion has now become acceptable grounds for censorship; even the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has declared that free speech should respect religious sensibilities, while the UN human rights council passed a resolution earlier this year condemning defamation of religion and calling for governments to prohibit it. As the writer Kenan Malik has so astutely pointed out, “In the post-Rushdie world, speech has come to be seen not intrinsically as a good but inherently as a problem because it can offend as well as harm …” Censorship, and self-censorship, Malik observes, have become the norm. What we have seen, over the past two decades, is an insidious new argument for curbing free speech become increasingly acceptable.
More here.