In the midst of what we euphemistically call the ”cartoon saga” (which in fact felt like a ”cartoon nightmare” to me), I was very happy to live in a secular state with a Constitution enshrining not only freedom of expression, but women’s rights too.
After my decision to publish (for illustration only) one of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that was causing a global furore, a storm was visited upon this news-paper. Muslim-owned shops cancelled their orders; several subscribers followed suit.
People I didn’t even know read the paper threatened to stop doing so.
That is fine, as reading is always a choice. But what was not fine was the personal pressure. The lawyer who, on behalf of the Jamiatul-Ulama, brought the interdict preventing all the weekend titles of Independent Newspapers and Johncom from even considering whether they would publish or not, phoned me. Rather breathlessly, he said: ”Ferial, I’ve got to help you vindicate yourself with the community.” I asked how. ”You’ve got to apologise. No buts. No justification.”
While I issued a full-spirited apology for the offence the decision to publish had caused, I had consistently added the view that freedom of speech was intrinsic to South Africa, though it is not absolute.
This was read as a ”justification” for which I needed ”vindication”. Gosh, I had visions of myself appearing in black abaya and burkha before a gathering of (male) leaders promising that all Mail & Guardian planning diaries would henceforth be passed through the bearded elders.
It was a nightmare scenario, but it also made me realise that, to people of his ilk, Afghanistan under the Taliban was the perfect state, while it was for me the ultimate dystopia for its violence and its religious and male chauvinism. Poor Bamiyan buddhas; poor women.
A secular state like the one I live in, while certainly no Utopia, is far more of an ideal. It is an interfaith state where people of different religions live (largely) in harmony with each other. Moreover, it enshrines my equal rights as a woman and gives me voice, a voice which I felt that many (men) tried to silence in the course of the cartoon saga.
On Channel Islam International, for example, presenter Ebrahim Gangat instructed me to take the counsel of the wise (men) before trying such a stunt again. Muhammad Adam, the owner of the Louis Pasteur hospital in Pretoria, sent a chain SMS asking for the faithful to pray that I burn in hell (like a witch).
Faced with such fundamentalism and patriarchy, I am very happy to embrace secularism, while maintaining a healthy respect for religion, my own and all others practised by all of humanity.
Would I run another cartoon? No, we wouldn’t — and that is because the M&G should be provocative, not offensive.
As I have come out of the cartoon wringer, it’s my view that we must, as a secular society guided by the Constitution, draw the line between what is acceptable expression and what is not very tightly.
It must be drawn at a small and limited number of offences like blasphemy (the cartoons) and harm or threat to life (the advertisements of the Rath Foundation).
In the course of the cartoon debate, some of us kept trying to advance the freedom of speech argument, but were drowned out by those who focused on the limits of free expression.
”Yes, but freedom of speech is limited. Yes, but freedom of speech is not an absolute. Yes, but freedom of speech is not what it is in Western Europe. Yes, but freedom of speech is context specific … ” it goes.
The arguments came from religious leaders across faiths, analysts, politicians, authors, lecturers, editors, you name it.
It’s made me think that if everybody is defending the ”buts” (or the limits), who is going to defend the freedom? If standing up as a fighter for this freedom makes me a secular fundamentalist, then so be it.
I am not naive in this: we are a young society forming our norms and values, defining which sets of rights we will elevate above others. As we do so, some of us are going to have to put up the fight for freedom of expression, lest it become a step-child of the Bill of Rights.
We are not immune from the corrosive conservatism sweeping the globe; it is marching inexorably across what was once the liberal heart of Western Europe.
God, himself, whispers in United States President George W Bush’s ear, telling him first to blow up Afghanistan, then Iraq, now Iran …
Yet, I still do not believe that there need be a clash between Qur’an (Torah, Bible) and Constitution. We are a nation that negotiated ourselves out of the past and into our imperfect, but still pretty cool, present.
We did that by knowing that, in order to gain, you have to give up. We perfected records of understanding. Enshrined collective bargaining. Managed to squeeze redistribution and property rights, equal rights and affirmative action into one Constitution. There is no reason why we cannot accommodate religious dignity, no sign that Islamophobia will ever muddy this land.
But what we should not forget is that this land is governed by a secular Constitution that enshrines freedom of speech. No buts about that.
This is an edited version of a speech delivered to the Human Rights Commission in March