October 5, 2006
Free speech in Europe
I am currently ploughing my way through a lot of American books, whose general theme could be summarised as “Europe is doomed”. While I find a lot of the stuff in these books irritating or off-the-mark, there is one recurrent theme that does seem particularly apposite at the moment - the threat to free speech in Europe posed by the fear of Islamist militants. This has been a continuing concern, ever since the eruption of the Salman Rushdie affair in the late 1980s. But it does seem to be getting worse. In the past couple of years Europe has had at least two more cause celebres - the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, after his film “Submission” had offended radical Islamists; and the worldwide row over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. But these incidents seem to be becoming more frequent. In the past fortnight, a German opera company has cancelled a performance - for fear of inciting Islamist rage. And meanwhile, an even more serious incident is unfolding in France where a well-known philosophy teacher has gone into hiding - after publishing a strong critique of Islam in Le Figaro, one of France’s two main national papers. Robert Redeker, the philosopher in question, was himself provoked by the fierce reaction in the Islamic world to the Pope’s recent speech on Islam and the west. Anne Applebaum, an American columnist based in Europe, sees the Papal row as the most serious of the lot. But perhaps the most disturbing element is not this or that incident - but the accumulation of pressure, the self-censorship it undoubtedly provokes and the way in which the gradual restriction of free speech is becoming less commented-upon, as it simply becomes part of normal life in Europe.
