As the guest speaker of the vrijzinnige dienst (humanist/secularist club) at the Antwerp University, Islam critic Benno Barnard went to Flanders to deliver a lecture titled “Het islamdebat: lang leve God, weg met Allah!” (“The Islam Debate: Long live God, down with Allah!”) last week. Silenced by the little, albeit vocal, Islamist group Sharia4Belgium even before he uttered a sentence, there remained no opportunity for any debate or dialogue whatsoever.

Freedom of speech is not only violated by the State, but also by fellow individuals or, as this case shows us, by a group of individuals. In an open society, everything should be under free discussion and every opinion should be allowed free expression. “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion,” wrote John Stuart Mill, “and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil stil”. The opinion may be true or false or even partly true and party false. In each case, the opinion should be fully heard, for “all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility”.  

Freedom does not equate to license as some opponents of liberalism tend to believe. Freedom in liberal sense is based on the the harm principle as articulated notably by philosopher such as Mill and Locke. License, on the other hand, refers to the state where a person has the full right to do whatever he wishes. From this standpoint, it can be argued that there was nothing wrong with what happened at the Antwerp University since the members of Sharia4Belgium had the full right to chant “Allahu Akbar!” without any expression or act of physical violence, the line where the free speech is supposed to end. Such view, however, ignores the fact that Benno Barnard and the audience were present there for his scheduled speech and it was prevented by the very chants of the group.

Liberals reject such notion of carte blanche. Critisizing the liberal understanding of the free speech as a “human right”, Murray Rothbard argues that “[the person] certainly does not have [the right to free speech] on property on which he is trespassing”. For liberals, the private property can have no superiority over other rights. The right to free speech should not be violated on the basis of property rights. It should be free from coercion and intimidation of any form. This was certainly not the case at the Antwerp University last week. The free speech was under fierce attack. “Let us resist before it’s too late,” writes the liberal thinker Dirk Verhofstadt. “We can no longer tolerate the intolerant!” 

Without doubt, the freedom of speech is a sine qua non of liberalism. But so is individualism – the notion that individual is the ultimate minority. Individualism is sometimes wrongly equated with egoism. Plato, to give an early example of this tradition, simply idendifies individualism with egoism. For Platonic thought, egoism is the only alternative to collectivism. “Plato's identification of individualism with egotism furnishes him with a powerful weapon for his defense of collectivism,” says Karl Popper.  

Liberalism endorses individualism as opposed to collectivist ideas, thus rejecting conservatism, nationalism, socialism, etc. The remarks made subsequently to the scandal at the Antwerp University, however, demonstrate how the collectivist mentality is stil widely shared. The statements of Muslim groups reflect how they feel they are perceived in the society, that is, in collectivist terms. The various groups within the Muslim community expressed their disapproval at the incident soon after it took place, distancing themselves from “dit marginaal groepje” (this little marginal group). Of course, not all Muslims feel the urge to tell that they distance themselves from Sharia4Belgium. Fouad Gandoul is one of them. In fact, he thinks the otherwise. In his article “De zeloten hebben ongelijk” (“The zealots are wrong”) in De Standaard, Gandoul calls Sharia4Belgium “violent, pathetic, stupid and totally counterproductive”, but he adds that he will not apologize for the zealotry of the marginal people. He points out that it has become a habit ever since 9/11 that Muslims should immediately express their distance from such groups. “The inclusion of Muslims in Flanders will only succeed when they are treated as responsible individuals and not constantly being put responsible for acts committed by one or another obscure organization who by chance legitimizes itself on the Islam,” he remarks. The point Gandoul makes reveals what we need for an open society where each and every individual are treated equally, and most importantly, as individuals rather than members of a collective.  

In fact, the collectivist mentality is widespread. People sometimes wonder why so many people in Turkey keep denying what really happened in 1915. This can very well be, I assume, accounted for the same collectivist way of thinking. Hrant Dink puts it clearly in an interview, “Armenians should try to understand Turks and see their proud stance. ‘As a Turk, I think genocide is a sick thing. They claim my fathers commited it. But I wouldn’t commit such a sick thing! Then how could have my fathers done such a thing?,” they think.” 

Liberals should fight against collectivism harder than ever at times like this. The extreme-right Vlaams Belang and others have seized this excellent opportunity to belitle liberal ideas. “The enemies of freedom have always charged its defenders with subversion. And nearly always they have succeeded in persuading the guileless and well-meaning,” says Karl Popper. We should not silently watch as collectivist ideas that undermine liberal values are spreading. We should not let individuals be demonized by these ideas. Every inidivdual are unique and they should be merely judged according to their own individuality. The fallacy collectivists are falling into preaches that a member or an adherent of a group shares automatically the same attributes as others in that group. This is how that “Wilders mentality” reaches the conclusion that all Muslims are violence-tending just because there have been Muslims who are or who happen to be violent. The same can be said for the opposite. There are those Muslims who are no less liberal than secular liberals, but again, this certainly cannot be interpreted that all Muslims embrace liberal ideals. One example of such people is Mustafa Akyol who argues that the best political system Muslims can live under is liberal democracy with a functioning free market economy and that Islam per se can not constitute a political system in any case. Consider Shari4Belgium on one hand, and people like him on the other. They both call themselves Muslim. While ideas among the individuals of the same religion seem to vary so radically, how safe and sound is it to reject individualist worldview and keep trying to see people in collectivist term? 

A fly in the ointment. What John Norris, an early intellectual rival of John Locke, meant by this phrase when he first coined it is expressed literally in a Turkish proverb: the fly is small, yet it makes you sick. No other phrase can better sum up the marginal group Sharia4Belgium. While condemning their violation of the free speech, let us not forget the elephant in the room that this fly has reminded us of. The elephant called collectivism, one of the very fundementals of illiberal ideologies. Let me finish my words sounding like those cliché-parroting socialist activists: another world is possible! A world where liberal ideas are not limited to some certain parts but prevail everywhere. There is too much work for liberals to realize that world, but the struggle is already going on. We must never give up. 

Notes:

Akyol, Mustafa. “Müslüman Aydının Liberalizmle İmtihanı”.

http://www.mustafaakyol.org/arsiv/2010/04/musluman_aydinin_liberalizmle_imtihani.php

Gandoul, Fouad. “De zeloten hebben ongelijk”.

      http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=RA2OERMP

Mill, John Stuart. “On Liberty”.

Popper, Karl. “The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1: The Spell of Plato”.

Rothbard, Murray. “‘Human Rights’ as Property Rights”.

      http://mises.org/daily/2569

Verhofstadt, Dirk. “We mogen niet langer tolerant zijn voor de intoleranten!”.

      http://www.liberales.be/columns/verhofstadtbenno