Magazine / Society / Euro-Islam / Speech | 02/05/2007

Free speech in a plural society

In the name of "tolerance" and "respect", liberals tend to hold that while free speech is good, speech must necessarily be less free in a plural society. This argument turns the notion of respect on its head, says Kenan Malik. It is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest possible extension of free speech.

Opening address at the 19th European Meeting of Cultural Journals

What should be the limits of free speech in a plural society? It is a question that has been asked with increasing urgency over the past few years. Ten years ago, when I last addressed a Eurozine conference, the question had a certain academic quality to it, the controversy over The Satanic Verses notwithstanding.

Multicultural society: street festival "World on our Doorstep” in Bristol, England.
Photo: stock.xchng

The events of the past decade – from 9/11 to the riots in France, from the London and Madrid bombings to the fury over the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Jyllands-Posten – have transformed the debate about multiculturalism and made it all too murderously real. They have also transformed liberal opinion.

Twenty years ago most liberals defended Salman Rushdie's right to publish The Satanic Verses despite the offence it caused many Muslims. Today, many liberals argue that whatever may appear to be right in principle, in practice one must appease religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt. As Ian Jack, editor of Granta magazine, has said of the pictorial depiction of Mohammed, one must weigh "the individual's right to exhibit or publish one" with "the immeasurable insult [...] that the exercise of such a right would cause". And for liberals such as Jack, the avoidance of cultural pain is, in a multicultural society, more important than what they consider to be the abstract right to freedom of expression.

Part of the problem with this whole debate is that both sides conflate two distinct notions of multiculturalism – multiculturalism as lived experience and multiculturalism as a political process. When most people say that multiculturalism is a good thing, what they mean is the experience of living in a society that is less insular, less homogenous, more vibrant and cosmopolitan than before. In other words, it's a case for cultural diversity, mass immigration, open borders, and open minds.

Those who advocate multiculturalism as a political process are, however, talking about something different. Multiculturalism, they argue, requires public recognition and affirmation of cultural differences. We live in a world, so the argument runs, in which there are deep-seated conflicts between cultures embodying different values, many of which are incommensurate but all of which are valid in their own context. Social justice requires not just that individuals are treated as political equals, but also that their cultural beliefs are treated as equally valid, and indeed are institutionalised in the public sphere. As the American scholar Iris Young puts it, "Groups cannot be socially equal unless their specific experience, culture, and social contributions are publicly affirmed and recognised."

This conflation of lived experience and political process has proved highly invidious. On the one hand, it has allowed many on the Right – and not just those on the Right – to present the problems of social cohesion as the product of mass immigration and has turned minorities into the problem. On the other hand, it has forced many liberals to abandon traditional notions of freedom and liberty in the name of defending diversity.

I believe it is critical to separate these two notions of multiculturalism. The irony of multiculturalism as a political process is that it undermines much of what is valuable about diversity as lived experience. When we talk about diversity, what we mean is that the world is a messy place, full of clashes and conflicts. That is all for the good, for such clashes and conflicts are the stuff of political and cultural engagement.

The question that liberals very rarely ask themselves is "Why should we value diversity?" Diversity is important, not in and of itself, but because it allows us to expand our horizons, to compare and contrast different values, beliefs, and lifestyles, make judgements upon them, and decide which may be better and which may be worse. It is important, in other words, because it allows us to engage in political dialogue and debate that can help create a more universal language of citizenship.

But it is precisely such dialogue and debate, and the making of such judgements, that multiculturalism as a political process attempts to suppress in the name of "tolerance" and "respect". The very thing that is valuable about diversity – the clashes and conflicts that it brings about – is what many multiculturalists most fear.

This is one of the reasons that so many of the recent flashpoints over multiculturalism have been over the question of free speech. From the Danish cartoons to the pope's speech, the fear is that unfettered free speech generates irresolvable conflicts and therefore needs to be constrained. Liberals have come to accept almost as axiomatic the idea that while free speech is good, speech must necessarily be less free in a plural society. For diverse societies to function and to be fair, we need to show respect for other peoples, cultures, and viewpoints. And we can only do so by being intolerant of people whose views give offence or who transgress firmly entrenched moral boundaries. As the British sociologist Tariq Modood puts it, "If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others' fundamental beliefs to criticism." One of the ironies of living in a plural society, it seems, is that the preservation of diversity requires us to leave less room for a diversity of views.

I believe the opposite is true. It is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest extension possible of free speech. In a homogenous society in which everyone thought in exactly the same way, the giving of offence would be nothing more than gratuitous. But in the real world where societies are plural, it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. And we should deal with those clashes rather than suppress them. Important because any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. The right to "subject each others' fundamental beliefs to criticism" is the bedrock of an open, diverse society. "If liberty means anything", as George Orwell once put it, "it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".

Ah, comes the response, but should we not also ensure that minorities are not deliberately denigrated? Is it not incumbent on a civilised society to protect the powerless and the vulnerable? Indeed it is. But ask yourself this: who is it that benefits most from censorship? Not the powerless and the vulnerable but rather those that possess both the power to censor and the necessity to do so. It is often said in making the case for censorship that the capacity for free speech is in the hands of just a few – media barons or government ministries. Actually, the opposite is the case. The power to censor is in the hands of the few. But the capacity for free speech is in all our mouths.

It reveals the topsy-turvy nature of the world in which we live that, on the one hand, many liberals can view censorship as progressive and that, on the other, defenders of free speech can view minorities as the greatest obstacle to freedom. Recently I took part in a British television debate about Muslims and free speech. My intention was to defend free speech as the friend, not the enemy, of minorities, including Muslims. But it proved not be so easy because the debate became polarised between those who wanted to defend free speech and saw Muslims as the problem (the final question on which the audience had to vote was "Are Muslims a threat to free speech?"), and those who wanted to defend Muslim rights and saw free speech as the problem.

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