Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Hate Speech and Foreign Relations

At Opinio Juris, my friend and former colleague Peter Spiro has an interesting post on recent events in Egypt and Libya. Peter argues that there is a foreign relations rationale for banning hate speech. In a world where obscure YouTube videos like “The Innocence of Muslims” can result in the murder of one of our ambassadors, he says, the US should consider banning such material. He notes that European countries have stricter limits on religious hate speech than we and still manage to have functioning democracies.

As I say, it’s an interesting post. Actually, though, this doesn’t seem a workable solution for the US, legally or politically. First, I don’t think Peter means “hate speech,” which typically connotes speech likely to incite violence against minorities. A ban on “hate speech” wouldn’t have applied to “The Innocence of Muslims,” which was not likely to incite violence against anyone, except perhaps the film’s producers.  I think the category Peter is looking for is “offensive” speech, specifically, speech that would offend listeners’ religious sensibilities. It’s true that European countries are more comfortable than the US with Read more

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What Film?

That, I think it’s fair to say, was the first reaction most Americans had to the news that a film insulting the Prophet Mohammad had set off mobs in Egypt and Libya, resulting in attacks on American embassies and the murder of an American ambassador. Apparently, the story is this. A couple of Americans have posted a film on YouTube, the oddly-named “The Innocence of Muslims,” that ridicules the Prophet and the founding of Islam, and also portrays the suffering of Coptic Christians in contemporary Egypt. It’s unlikely the “film” — it’s really more a poorly-done video — would have been seen by more than a handful of internet trawlers, had not Terry Jones, the Florida pastor last known for threatening to burn a Quran, promoted it. Word spread through the Middle East – who knew Jones had a following there? – and, eventually, as one thing led to another, Islamist mobs saw a chance to stoke resentment against the US. And now we see the results.

There will be time to reflect on all of this, but two things seem immediately clear. First, there’s going to be more violence before this episode ends. Some of that violence will be directed against American interests, but most will be directed against the Middle East’s own Christians, particularly Egypt’s long-suffering Copts. Local governments will do relatively little to protect these Christians, and the international human rights community will remain largely silent as well. (Hopefully, the US is getting ready to grant a wave of asylum applications from Coptic refugees, but you never know). In Syria, Assad’s support among Christians will only solidify. Syrian Christians really need no reminder of what is likely to happen to them if the Ba’ath regime falls, but yesterday’s events do underscore things.

Second, whatever happens in this crisis, similar crises are bound to occur in future. As long as America continues to respect the First Amendment, people will continue to make and show films like “The Innocence of Muslims.” In a YouTube age, in which anyone with a video camera and a computer can beam films around the globe for very little money, it will be virtually impossible to restrain them — even assuming it would be legal, which it would not be, to attempt to do so. And, as long as the religious sensibilities of the West and the Muslim world continue to diverge so radically — as long as videos most Americans would dismiss as obscure junk continue to be bloody provocations in the Muslim world — clashes like yesterday’s seem sadly inevitable.

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Agrama, “Questioning Secularism”

This October, the University of Chicago Press will publish Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt by Hussein Ali Agrama (University of Chicago). The publisher’s description follows.

The central question of the Arab Spring—what democracies should look like in the deeply religious countries of the Middle East—has developed into a vigorous debate over these nations’ secular identities. But what, exactly, is secularism? What has the West’s long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In Questioning Secularism, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.

Drawing on a precedent-setting case arising from the family law courts —the last courts in Egypt to use Shari‘a law—Agrama shows that secularism is a historical phenomenon that works through a series of paradoxes that it creates. Digging beneath the perceived differences between the West and Middle East, he highlights secularism’s dependence on the law and the problems that arise from it: the necessary involvement of state sovereign power in managing the private spiritual lives of citizens and the irreducible set of legal ambiguities such a relationship creates. Navigating a complex landscape between private and public domains, Questioning Secularism lays important groundwork for understanding the real meaning of secularism as it affects the real freedoms of a citizenry, an understanding of the utmost importance for so many countries that are now urgently facing new political possibilities.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Alawites, Alevis, and Secularism in the Middle East

I’ve written before on CLR Forum about the plight of the Middle East’s Christians. As religious minorities, Christians favor state secularism; the revolutions of the Arab Spring, which have tended to bring Islamist parties to power, offer Christians as much to fear as to praise. But Christians are not the only religious minorities in the Middle East. As this very interesting essay by Baylor historian Philip Jenkins explains, Alawites in Syria and Alevis in Turkey — two different groups, despite the similar-sounding names — number in the tens of millions. Both groups consider themselves Muslim, but some of their beliefs and practices differ dramatically from both Sunni and Shia Islam. For example, Alawites and Alevis drink wine and celebrate some Christian and Zoroastrian holidays; they do not veil women. Most Muslims, and certainly most Islamists, dismiss them as heretical.

Like Christians, Alawites and Alevis have tended to support secular parties: the Ba’ath Party in Syria and Kemalist parties in Turkey. Jenkins explains:

[B]oth movements . . . represented powerful bastions against religious extremism in the region, as they had everything to lose from any enforcement of strict Sunni Muslim orthodoxy. Both sects were powerfully invested in secularism, which in a Middle Eastern context usually meant Read more

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The Wall Street Journal on Syria’s Christians

An interesting piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the dire situation of Syria’s Christians, “Can Syria’s Christians Survive?” The secularism of the Assad regime has provided a space for Christians, mostly Catholic and Orthodox, who make up roughly 10% of Syria’s population. The opposition “Free Syrian Army,” made up principally of Sunni Muslims, has murky ties to Islamists, and Christians worry what will happen to them if Islamists ever gain power – as Islamists have done in other Arab Spring revolutions, like Egypt’s. One possibility the article suggests is a restoration of classical dhimmi restrictions on Christians. (I’m not sure where the reporters got that idea; even the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt hasn’t seriously proposed restoring the dhimmi rules). The more likely outcome is that Christians will be caught in a crossfire between Sunnis and Alawites — the sect to which the Assad family belongs, which Sunni Islam sees as heretical — and be forced to leave the country, as Iraq’s Christians did in the last decade.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Syrian Archbishop: “They Don’t Tell Us Who Is Coming”

From PRI’s “The World,” an interview with the Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, on the precarious state of that city’s Christians, who are trying to negotiate a neutral status in Syria’s civil war. “They are talking about the change of the President,” Mar Gregorios explains, “but they don’t tell us who is coming to rule this country. Anything could happen . . . for example, the fanatics [may] come and control the country. We need to hear that nothing will happen to the Christians in Syria.”

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

More on Syria’s Christians

As I wrote here last fall, Syria’s Christians have shown a lot of ambivalence about the civil war taking place in their country. Assad runs a police state, but his secular government protects Christians, who make up about 10% 0f the population, allowing them churches, schools, and community centers. When Syria’s Christians consider the persecution of Iraqi Christians that followed the fall of Saddam, and the persecution of Coptic Christians that followed the fall of Mubarak, they wonder what a “democratic” government in Syria would do for them. Not without reason, they worry that the Sunni opposition, if it ever gained power, would be less concerned with their human rights than the Ba’ath Party.

Two recent articles provide some background on the situation. The first is an essay in the New York Times by Clark University historian Taner Akcam, whose recent book I noted here.  Akcam writes that Turkey’s Prime Minister Recip Erdogan has been speaking a lot lately about the need to protect human rights in Syria. Erdogan’s statements are unlikely to reassure Syrian Christians, Akcam Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Syria’s Threatened Christians

The authors of this New York Times op-ed discuss the threat anti-Assad forces, which include increasing numbers of Sunni jihadists, pose to Syria’s Christians. “The ousting of the Assad regime has become a global moral obligation,” they write, “but so has the duty to ensure that Syria’s future holds a place for all minorities.” A nice thought, but given the track record, can anyone seriously expect that either Western governments or the international human rights community will do very much for Syria’s Christians?

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Annicchino on Religious Freedom in European Foreign Policy

Pasquale Annicchino (Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies) is doing interesting work on a new phenomenon, the promotion of religious freedom in the foreign policy of the EU. I heard him give a paper on the subject at the conference at Harvard earlier this month. Last week, he had an op-ed in La Stampa describing a proposed unit within the EU’s new diplomatic corps, the European External Relations Service, devoted to the protection of religious freedom abroad. This unit, which is modeled after the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, is perceived as especially important in the context of the Arab Spring. Annicchino argues that the unit must have power to impose sanctions for violations of religious freedom; economic agreements the EU has with third countries may provide a mechanism. Here’s the link (in Italian).

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Goldenziel on Courts in Majority-Muslim Countries

In the conflict between Islamists and secularists in majority-Muslim countries, courts can play a major role. Yesterday, for example,  Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court issued rulings allowing a former Mubarak loyalist to run for president and effectively dissolving the country’s Islamist-dominated parliament — clear victories for executive power and supporters of the old regime. A new piece by Jill Goldenziel (Harvard), Veiled Political Questions: Islamic Dress, Constitutionalism, and the Ascendance of Courts, suggests that the situation is more complicated, however. Courts in majority-Muslim countries do not always side with executive power. Even in Egypt, there are tensions between the SCC, which the Mubarak regime brought to heel, and the High Administrative Court, which remained more independent.  Her piece makes for interesting reading. The abstract follows.

This article explains how judicial independence can develop in regimes that are not fully democratic. Conventional wisdom holds that a strong legislature and political parties are necessary for the emergence of an independent judiciary. This article challenges conventional wisdom by explaining how judicial independence may arise in regimes where these conditions are not present. It presents a theory of how judicial independence emerges and why and when other political actors will respect it. The article also explains why courts may be better poised than legislatures to counter executive power in non-democracies. The theory is developed through a discussion of cases involving Islamic headscarves and veils in Middle Eastern courts. These cases have broad political implications because Read more