Two significant recent public readings on freedom of speech and terrorism – Waleed Aly, George Monbiot

TK – We are going to hear a welter of words on this in coming weeks, as proposed tightened-up Australian legislation is discussed among politicians, commentators and (I hope) in the Australian community. A lot of this may be prejudiced and poorly informed discussion. But here are two "readings" ( the first is an ABC interview), by Waleed Aly (Australian lawyer) and George Monbiot (UK political philosopher) that I think are worth reflecting on. See especially Waleed Aly’s final comments about effective self-policing now getting underway in Australian Muslim communities. He makes a lot of sense to me. I hope he will to our legislators, too.

ABC PM transcript: Lawyer, Waleed Aly, comments on freedom of speech laws - PM, 10 August 2005 (Reporter: Mark Colvin) [TK - and with thanks to Garry Bickley for running this]

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1434815.htm]

MARK COLVIN:

If the balaclava-ed man [TK - in today’s news] is clearly identified as an Australian who's gone off to fight for al-Qaeda, it'll add even more weight to the debate about free speech and the Islamic community here.

Britain's already discussing the possibility of charging people with treason if they incite others to fight against the country's forces in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. One extremist preacher, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, has already left Britain for Lebanon after learning he could face incitement charges. Now it's been announced he'll be banned from returning to Britain if he fails to come back before the end of the month.

So where should the lines between freedom of speech and incitement to violence be drawn in Australia? Waleed Aly is a Melbourne lawyer and a member of the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria. I began by asking him about people who support the insurgency in Iraq.

WALEED ALY: I think to say that they support the insurgency in Iraq is, it's a political view. Now it might be one that we consider to be unsavoury in Australia. If it can be demonstrated that that type of rhetoric actually poses some kind of security threat to Australia, then I can see a case for legislating against it. In the absence of that, it seems to me a political view that doesn't vilify anybody, doesn't defame anybody. So as long as it's not inciting to violence itself then I don't see that there's a need for law to encroach upon it.

MARK COLVIN: How can it not be inciting to violence if you're supporting an insurgency which actually sends people out to explode suicide bombs that sometimes kill civilians as well as service people?

WALEED ALY: Yeah. There's a difference I think between saying someone supported the insurgency, which is a bit of an ambiguous statement because the type of insurgencies that exist in Iraq are incredibly varied. But if they're going to say look I support the insurgency, that's a different thing I think from encouraging someone to take part in it. Now that line may be a fairly fine one and I think that's a question for the Government to look at, as to exactly how fine that line is and what are the real applications or the implications in real terms of that distinction, because if we're reaching a point where that sort of speech, in practice, is going to have the effect of encouraging violence or inciting violence and inciting terrorism, then I think that's something that the Government has every right to look at.

And I should say, it's also something that should be of concern to a great deal of Muslims because the kind of bombing that takes place in Iraq, suicide bombings from the insurgency there, actually claim a lot more Muslim civilian lives than they do any other.

MARK COLVIN: Similarly there are grey areas aren't there, or there's a fine line to be drawn between saying you don't support the state of Israel, and for instance I interviewed a spokesman from Hizb ut-Tahrir recently who, about a statement on their website, or their British website which said, "kill them all wherever they are" in the context of the Jews.

WALEED ALY: I think there's a big difference. That sort of statement where you're actually advocating violence against Jews, and I haven't seen the statement but from what you said, that's just totally unacceptable. I don't see why law should actually tolerate that. That seems to me a pretty clear incitement to violence. In fact, I'd be surprised if that's not already outlawed in Australia.

MARK COLVIN: And do you think that Hizb ut-Tahrir should be closed down or banned in Australia?

WALEED ALY: Well I note that the British Government seems to be convinced that they will ban them in Britain. I think in Australia, what I wouldn't like to see is the group of people that go by that name in Australia banned solely on the strength of statements that have been made by people carrying the same label in Britain.

I think the Government probably has its approach to this right. And that is that if they get a case that demonstrates that there is something dangerous about them here, then they will, they'll step in and ban them, and if the Government has that information and that's communicated to us and we're convinced that they're justified in feeling that way about them then we're certainly not going to have any qualms with the banning of an organisation that causes a national security threat to Australia.

MARK COLVIN: As a lawyer, can you see any way of drafting laws to cover these kinds of things without massive ambiguity?

WALEED ALY: It's very difficult. I mean freedom of speech, any laws that encroach upon freedom of speech or deal with restrictions on speech are always problematic because you're always, whatever you draft, there are an infinite number of factual situations that may arise, that those laws would need to be applied to and that makes it very difficult.

In Victoria we've had the recent experience with racial and religious tolerance act which raises similar sorts of arguments. I think a lot of the argument about that act has been fundamentally misconceived but nevertheless the difficulties that arise with defamation law apply equally to that sort of law.

MARK COLVIN: So what is the answer? I've been told that members of the Islamic, senior members of the Islamic community in Victoria for instance have asked Sheik Omran, the Melbourne cleric, to shut up basically.

WALEED ALY: Yeah. Well I think that that's not so much a legal question for those members of the Muslim community.

MARK COLVIN: No but I'm asking you if you're answer is essentially about self-policing?

WALEED ALY: Yeah. Well I think one of the things that's come out of the recent exposure of that type of rhetoric is that it's been shown I think, or at least perceived in the mainstream Muslim community, as being something that's ugly and something that's not actually helpful, and so there is kind of a social development that arises from that whereby you might call it a kind of self-policing or a kind of self-censorship. It might more accurately be perceived as something that's more of a social development, where the ideas are being confronted and people are sort of saying well that's actually not acceptable, that's not really what we're on about as a community.

MARK COLVIN: Waleed Aly, a Melbourne lawyer and member of the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria.

**

TK - And now some rather more confronting views from George Monbiot, from the UK Guardian, repeated today in the SMH Opinion Page ( with thanks to the Guardian and the SMH).

http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/sounds-of-war-echo-in-calls-to-patriotism/2005/08/10/1123353380422.html

"Sounds of war echo in calls to patriotism" – George Monbiot, Sydney Morning Herald Opinion, August 11, 2005

A unified and fierce national allegiance might reduce home-grown terrorism but it bodes ill for peace, writes George Monbiot.

OUT OF the London bombings a national consensus has emerged: what we need in Britain is a renewed sense of patriotism. The right-wing papers have been making their usual noises about old maids and warm beer, but in the past 10 days they've been joined by Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, Tristram Hunt in the New Statesman, the New Statesman itself and just about everyone who has opened his mouth on the subject of terrorism and national identity.

Emboldened by this consensus, The Sun tabloid insists that anyone who isn't loyal to this country should leave it. The way things are going, it cannot be long before I am deported.

The argument runs as follows: patriotic people do not turn on each other. If there are codes of citizenship and a belief in Britain's virtues, acts of domestic terrorism are unlikely to happen. As Freedland writes, the United States, in which "loyalty is instilled constantly", has never "had a brush with home-grown Islamist terrorism".

This may be true (though there have been plenty of attacks by non-Muslim terrorists in the US). But while patriotism might make citizens less inclined to attack each other, it makes the state more inclined to attack other countries, for it knows it is likely to command the support of its people. If patriotism were not such a powerful force in the US, could Bush have invaded Iraq?

To argue that national allegiance reduces human suffering, you must assert that acts of domestic terrorism cause more grievous harm than all the territorial and colonial wars, ethnic cleansing and holocausts pursued in the name of the national interest. To believe this, you need to be not just a patriot but a chauvinist.

Confronted with a conflict between the interests of your country and those of another, patriotism, by definition, demands that you choose those of your own. Internationalism, by contrast, means choosing the option that delivers most good or least harm to people, regardless of where they live.

It tells us that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in London, and that a policy which favours the interests of 100 British people at the expense of 101 Congolese is one we should not pursue. Patriotism, if it means anything, tells us we should favour the interests of the 100 British people. How do you reconcile this choice with liberalism? How, for that matter, do you distinguish it from racism?

This is the point at which every right-thinking person in Britain scrambles for his Orwell. Did not the sage assert that "patriotism has nothing to do with conservatism", and complain that "England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality"? He did. But he wrote this during World War II.

There was no question that we had a duty to fight Hitler and, in so doing, to take sides. And the sides were organised along national lines. If you failed to support Britain, you were assisting the enemy. But today the people trying to kill us are British citizens. They are divided from most of those who live here by ideology, not nationality. To the extent that the invasion of Iraq motivated the terrorists, and patriotism made Britain's participation in the invasion possible, it was patriotism that got us into this mess.

Two weeks ago, the London Telegraph published a list of "10 core values of the British identity" whose adoption, it argued, would help to prevent another terrorist attack. These were not values we might choose to embrace, but "non-negotiable components of our identity".

Among them were "the sovereignty of the crown in Parliament" ("the Lords, the Commons and the monarch constitute the supreme authority in the land"), "private property", "the family", "history" ("British children inherit … a stupendous series of national achievements") and "the English-speaking world" ("the atrocities of September 11, 2001 were not simply an attack on a foreign nation; they were an attack on the Anglosphere"). These non-negotiable demands are not so different to those of the terrorists. Instead of an eternal caliphate, an eternal monarchy. Instead of an Islamic vision of history, the one born of Britain's elite boarding school system. Instead of the Ummah, the Anglosphere.

If there is one thing that could make me hate this country, it is the Telegraph and its "non-negotiable components". If there is one thing that could make me hate America, it was the sight of the crowds at the Republican convention standing up and shouting "USA, USA" while Zell Miller informed them that "nothing makes this marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators". As usual, we are being asked to do the job of the terrorists, by making this country ugly on their behalf.

I do not hate Britain, and I am not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other. There are some things I like about it and some things I don't, and the same goes for everywhere else I have visited.

To become a patriot is to lie to yourself, to tell yourself that whatever good you might perceive abroad, your own country is, on balance, better than the others. It is impossible to reconcile this with either the evidence of your own eyes or a belief in the equality of humankind.

Patriotism of the kind Orwell demanded in 1940 is necessary only to confront the patriotism of other people: the Second World War, which demanded that the British close ranks, could not have happened if Hitler hadn't exploited the national allegiance of the Germans.

The world will be a happier and safer place when we stop putting our own countries first.

The Guardian