Dispatches

Wednesday 18^th October

Jun and I cycled down Farringdon Road and over Blackfriars Bridge to meet a couple of friends at the London Studios on the South Bank. We queued (twice) for significantly more than an hour but made it into the studio for the filming of a Dispatches special: “Are Muslims a threat to free speech?” to be aired next Monday on Channel 4. We were shepherded up two flights of stairs, across a corridor and then down two flights. Jon Snow, the presenter, commented on the poor architectural planning before mauve lights swept down, Weakest Link style, to cue the debate.

Kenan Malik was the “advocate” for free speech, Imran Khan spoke against the motion. I think Khan did the slightly better job in sticking to his brief in what was not what I would describe as a debate erring on the philosophical. They took turns to ask questions to 6 guests: Abo Laaban, the Danish Muslim who “created the controversy” about the cartoons; Caroline Fourest, a French anti-racist, feminist and secularist editor who made the decision to republish them; Gijs Van de Westelaken, the producer of the murdered/assassinated Theo Van Gogh’s film, Submission; Ibrahim Mogra, the Chair of the Muslim Council of Britain; Taji Mustafa, the London representative of Hizb-ut-Tharir; and Shami Chakrabati, the Director of the civil liberties NGO, Liberty, wearer of the best footwear and the only “witness” familiar to me.

I found myself agreeing with points on all sides but it made no difference to my opinion. Westelaken argued that freedom of speech meant “within the boundaries of the law – it’s that simple” and my first laugh of the debate was stifled by the applause around me. Evidently, many people have more respect for the law (and the process of its production) than I do. “The law” – in the form of Blair’s government - has been trying seriously and sometimes succeeding in undermining our freedom of speech. Some might go so far as to call recent statements from Straw, et al a smokescreen. As was pointed out more than once tonight, it is minorities (Muslims are less than 3% if the UK population) that suffer first when freedoms are attacked.

I’d somehow got the impression that the debate was audience-led when I applied for the tickets but that was not the case. A few people were asked what they thought at the end of the debate and there were two audience votes on remote controls just like those at 1 versus 100 except with antennae rather than plugs. The first vote, about whether the host should show the cartoons, went 68% in favour of “yes” (it didn’t happen – presenter Snow read out a pre-prepared C4 statement). Given that the audience seemed keen to offend, it was a turnaround that the second vote – on whether Muslims are a threat to free speech – went 52%/48% with “no”.

The pedantry that is evident in my argument with my brother manifested itself tonight. After Snow took the result for the cartoon vote, he closed to adverts saying there had been an effort to make the studio audience “as representative a cross section of British society as possible” studio audience. Fortunately for my predisposition, he knew the younger of a mother-daughter pair in front of us. He came over and after an intro and a chat with them, I was able to bend his ear about the use of the term. He was graceful enough to acknowledge that I had a point and admitted he was just reading an autocue. He didn’t compliment my T-shirt though. One journalistic slip is within the error of margin for the old guard. Unfortunately, this was not the only inaccuracy in his text. Closing, and admitting that the result was a surprise, he read that this was a vote (paraphrasing) that illustrated a desire to curb free speech and that the “freedom from offence” was important). That’s certainly not what I voted for...I could’ve slammed the remote control down.

Anyway, regardless of his loose terminology, I feel cheated. I had been ready to speak and, when the obvious wisdom of my words was digested, speak some more on why the debate is untimely and why MPs should exercise more restraint given the hundreds of thousands of Muslims Bush and Blair are killing, how Islam is not monolithical, the interpretation of the Quran is patriarchal, why western women’s bodies are also the cultural site of sexism, how freedom to do something does not imply an obligation and also to question intentions surrounding what is “news”. I envisioned Jon Snow handing me the microphone and sitting back just smiling and nodding as the rest of the audience threw off everything they believed – political and/or religious – in order to embrace my words and declare me all-knowing. I saw the future: a rational atheist movement for the 21^st Century with me as its God, err, I mean inspiration.