The Islamic Case against Freedom of Speech

The Islamic Case Against the Right of Freedom of Speech Please permit me to present the Islamic case against the doctrine and practice of the right to freedom of speech. The Islamic Critique of Capitalism Our opposition to the doctrine and practice of the right of freedom of speech is part of our definitive critique of capitalist order. As Maulana Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall has said capital is “Takathu” – translated as “rivalry in worldly increase”. Capitalist spirituality entails the impregnation of the soul of mankind by the vices of avarice (accumulation) and covetousness (competition). All religions – and especially Christianity and Islam – abhor this satanic spirituality. The capitalist system and life-world came into power first by destroying Christian moral and social order in a long struggle beginning in the tenth century AD through imperialist conquest and globalization of capitalist dominance has spread all over the world. Islam resists the systemic dominance of capitalist order. It is currently the only religion which can carry on this struggle because all other religions – Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism – have been subsumed within capitalist order. The Concept of Freedom Capitalist raison d'être is freedom. Freedom is the primary value promoted by all capitalist ideologies – liberalism, socialism, nationalism etc. It is the commitment to freedom which makes transcendence of capitalist order possible for example a socialist regime replaces a liberal one. The religious (Islamic/Christian) opposition to capitalist order is focused on rejection of the concept of freedom. The concept of freedom as a social, political value emerged in the writings of the French Encyclopedists. It’s most lucid expression is to be found in Kant’s three Critiques. According to Kant, the free individual is both autonomous and self-determined. The only commands he accepts as categorical are those of his own self. The self has a dual structure. The lower self is the seat of passions – avarice and covetousness. It submits its commands to the evaluation of an upper “discriminating” self which apprehends those commands that can be universalized. Universalization of the commands of the lower self is universalization of avarice and covetousness. Capital is the material resource which facilitates the fulfillment of these universalizable commands of the lower self. Social articulation of this spirituality produces a specific capitalist individuality – the citizen. The citizen is autonomous and self-determined. He recognizes no authority except the authority of his own (discriminating) self. He is also self-creating. Through the conceptual activity of his mind he creates both Truth and Reality. He is a humanist in the specific sense that he rejects the autonomy of God. The citizen creates a republic which establishes the rule of capital – the sole means for the fulfillment of the universalized commands of the self. The rule of capital is legitimated by human legislation and by the imposition of constitution. The constitution replaces the Word of God as a source of state authority. The legal resources provided by the constitution to the citizen for the practice of capitalist rule on human rights.

Human Rights The concept of human rights is a derivative of the concept of capitalist property. Justification of capitalist property (both private and state) is produced in the Labor Theory of Value. This doctrine is solidified in the Lockean belief that man (not God) is the owner of his body. He create value by using his labor with nature. The Body is man’s primary property and its rational purpose is to create value through production and accumulation. According to Lock capitalist property has three components: a) life, b) estate, c) opinion. All three must be dedicated to the purpose of value creation through capital accumulation. A human being (according to Foucault the concept of humanity appeared in the 16th century) is one who dedicates his life, estates and opinion to the process of value accumulation. Other men are not strictly human and can possess no rights in a capitalist state. It is on this ground that Lock justifies the plunder of the American continent and the mass slaughter of the Red Indians whom George Washington called “wolves”. This justification is also implicit in the America’s ongoing “war on terror”. The capitalist state provides human rights exclusively for human beings not for Red Indians or “Terrorists” to enable them to dedicate their lives, estates and opinions for the accumulation of value. The Right to Freedom of Speech All capitalist states (liberal, socialist, nationalist, intermediate regimes) endorse the doctrine of human rights because the provision/possession of human rights is necessary for the articulation of capitalist rule. Historically the right to freedom of speech is a weapon employed by capitalist state to subvert and destroy religious regimes. It was used as a means for legitimating the secularization of public order. Religious discourse was banished from the public sphere and inter-subjectivity (in the Habermassian sense) was constructed solely for the purpose of fulfilling the universalizable commands of human selves. The practitioners of the doctrine of free speech have delegitimized all religious political practices often in the most violent/evident way. Thus during the French Revolution thousands of catholic priests were murdered, hundreds of holy nuns were raped and forced into prostitution. The entire property of the Church was confiscated and in its initial days Christianity was outlawed. Equally, horrendous persecution of the Orthodox Church occurred in the Soviet Union during the period of War Communism (1918-1920). The recognition of the right to freedom of speech is a means for turning mass opinion into the capitalist property. Today information has been thoroughly commodified and internet server monopoly platforms are making trillions of dollars buying and selling free speech. They are also manufacturing and distributing it – their business is booming as virtual reality and fictitious capital (finance) take charge in the capitalist world. As the cacophony of free speech deprives the world of Divine guidance, satanic spirituality penetrates into every aspect of social life. Consumption/Competition, lewdness, deceit, lust and jealousy flourish. The entertainment industry becomes a cesspool of vice. Pornography becomes the soul of art and culture. No wonder Maulana Pickthall described the West not as a civilization but as an “Enlightened Savagery”.

Subjects of capital – human beings – have created hell on earth where there is no room for recognizing any transcendental truth and the “truth” is false knowledge systems (Jahliyat-e-Khalisa) create are routinely posed as simulacra of falsehoods. The moral bareness of this putrid social order is most graphically expressed in the explosive growth of homosexuality – the ultimate decline of mankind’s creative potentiality. In most advanced capitalist countries homosexual “marriages” have been given constitutional protection. Homosexual advocacy has been entered school curriculum. Obama preached homosexuality throughout his presidential career. Pope Francis told a homosexual man “God created you thus. Who am I to judge?” The Islamic Case We are committed to a relentless struggle against the capitalist system and life-world even if the struggle lasts several centuries. We reject freedom as a political value and in our traditional political thought (the writings of Imam Mawardi, Imam Abu Yala, Imam Ibn Khaldun and Shah Waliullah) freedom is seen as Al Bagh rebellion against Allah. We reject human rights as capitalist instruments. We are struggling to de-secularize the state and to exclusively reserve the public sphere for the articulation of religious discourse alone. We endorse the pre-Augestinian commitment “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven”. We reject the belief in the divinity of humanity and recognize Allah as the sole legislator. There will be no room for the practice of the right of free speech in an Islamic state for this right envisages opinion as part of capitalist property and the Islamic state will abolish capitalist property in both its “private” and “state” forms. Practice of the right of free speech secularizes social/political order and constricts the sphere of divine guidance to the sphere of individual choice. Secularists rule through articulating the law of capital. Society is engulfed in a flood of viciousness, obscenity and consumption/ corruption. The Islamic state will guarantee the protection of the rights of the slaves of Allah (Huquq-ul-Ibad) – the obverse of human rights. The state will function to disempower the rebels against the sovereignty of God. Javed Akbar Ansari Javed Akbar Ansari has been serving the Islamic Movement of Pakistan, Britain, Malaysia and Austria since 1962.