The AMI Podcast

The concept of unadulterated free speech is regularly vilified within many Muslim circles in the UK. Free speech is often perceived as a clarion call of apologists for racists defending the propagation of racism. The concurrent unwillingness of free speech advocates to acknowledge and reflect on their failure to win the hearts and minds of many sections of minority communities, provides a useful basis for this perception, and is rarely scrutinised. This paper seeks to highlight contradictions in the UK public space on issues related to British Muslims, by considering free speech considerations across a series of case studies: 1. The government’s Prevent policy, which has become a duty for specified public institutions. 2. The response to the definition of Islamophobia and the definition of anti-Semitism. 3. The advocacy of conservative practices. 4. Racism and lack of diversity within mainstream media. This paper will argue that a consistent approach to free speech, supporting and strengthening the speech of minority communities, is necessary for a healthy democracy, and a pre-requisite for more challenging free speech arguments to gain traction.

This presentation will review recent calls within the UK for government-backed definitions of Islamophobia, while considering the unanticipated consequences of such proposals, as well as the convergence of the discussion around defining antisemitism with defining anti-Muslim racism. I focus on the definition of Islamophobia which is being proposed for adoption by government and a range of civil society organisations, and compare and contrast that definition with other ways of understanding anti-Muslim racism. To the extent that a definition of Islamophobia will fail to address the government’s role in propagating Islamophobia through ill-considered legislation that conflates Islamist discourse with hate speech, the proposal for a government-backed definition of Islamophobia should not be regarded favourably. We can also learn from the lessons of the negative effects of the government's adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Alongside opposing government attempts to define Islamophobia (and Islam), I argue that advocacy efforts should instead focus on disambiguating government counter-terrorism initiatives from the government management of controversies within Islam.

Although the United Nations ratified ‘the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (UDHR) in 1948, but we do not have such a universal deceleration on ‘human duties’ yet. The UDHR and the 1967 ‘International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’ (ICCPR), which recognize freedom of expression, define its domine to “respect of the rights or reputations of others, and the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.” Muslim countries have repeatedly tried to ban insults to Muslim beliefs by relying on this clause and have never succeeded; This is because the clause deals with violations of the rights of "individuals", and no rights are recognized for "religions" (or followers of religions). That is, insulting an "individual" can be a crime, but insulting the "religious beliefs" of individuals in these documents is not considered a crime in principle! In addition, there is no difference between scholarly critique of religion and non-scholarly or critique for the masses in these documents. In contrast, we should pay attention to three major points in the principle of ‘freedom of speech’ in Islam. First, freedom of expression in Islam in both areas of individuals and religions does not include the freedom to ridicule, insult, and make a mockery of anyone especially Prophets, while critique of religion is allowed. Second, in Islamic thought freedom of expression in the public sphere is different from freedom of expression for the specialized audiences in academic circles. There is absolutely no red line or any restrictions for scholarly critique of Islam or Shi’ism in academic circles, while for the mass audience, there are restrictions that will not shake the faith of people due to weak public information. Third, a distinction must be made between the Qur'an, the practical tradition of the Prophet, and the practical tradition of Imam Ali, on the one hand, and hadiths attributed to the Prophet and the Imams, conventional Islamic sciences, and the lived experiences of Muslims throughout the history, on the other hand. In the former type of sources, apostasy and blasphemy do not have any temporal punishments, while in the latter type, apostasy and blasphemy lead to the execution of the apostate or blasphemer, the annulment of his/her marriage, and liquidation of his/her property. While the first former of Islamic resources supports strongly freedom of expression and critique of religion, serious obstacles for realization of freedom of expression and critique of religion are not easily deniable in the latter type. The possibility or practicability of the first two points in the age of the new media, internet and social network needs critical elaboration. The third point requires a lot of deep scholarly clarifications confronting the traditional Islamic literature and heavy Western scholarship on Islam.

With gender being a central theme of the discussion, Dr. Yacoob began by positioning her presentation in the milieu of gender in Islamic law,  and particularly from the Hanafi School. The presentation explored the idea of intersectional identities to ask the question about how much of what is seen as gender-related law, is actually informed exclusively by gender as the identity marker. Dr. Yacoob argued that it is often other aspects of a female subject’s identity that cause certain laws to apply.   These other identity markers may include the woman’s position in a  family unit, her freedom, her age and other social positions. In her closing arguments, Dr. Yacoob included the idea that viewing Islam and  Islamic law, through the lens of gender, was partly a colonial imposition. The presentation resulted in a vibrant question and answer  session among the virtual seminars attendees

During the second research of the academic term, Dr Haroon Bashir explored race in Islamicate societies and the claim that it was structured around racial hierarchies using blackness as a case study. He posed the question as to why certain stories of anti-blackness have been produced and reproduced so widely in western literature?  Through the exploration of an under-studied genre of ‘Black  Excellence’ literature, he attempted to unmoor these narratives. Haroon presented the thesis that much of the literature exploring the subject is characterised by essentialist narratives about ‘Arab supremacy’ and exclusively considering slaves as black in order to reaffirm the colonial history of the West and their troubled relations with race. In contrast to this, he argued that such rigid notions of race cannot be projected onto Islamicate society, where race was a far more fluid concept, as there are examples of being Arab being associated with the language as opposed to ethnicity. Haroon concluded the presentation by arguing that whilst studying the relationship between different tribes is necessary for understanding race relations in Islamicate societies,  it is imperative to detach this study from the Eurocentric narrative.