Speaking Truth to Media

The Dominion Post recently published an opinion piece Free speech pairs with fairness by its former editor, Tim Pankhurst (26 May 2015).  It filled in a few interesting details about local events at the time of the Danish Muhammad cartoons, but otherwise was an anodyne piece offering guarded support for freedom of speech balanced by the fear of disturbing the fragile sensibilities of Muslims.  There were a few indiscretions – he thinks “God” and “Allah” are the same notwithstanding their major theologically different identities, he has no idea about the substance of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, and he says “Islam in its purest form is a peaceful religion . . . ”  In terms of moving the debate forward it achieved nothing, indeed, retarding it by minimising the dangers faced by the West.

Given that Pankhurst trotted out the familiar “do not disturb” colloquy, I chose just one feature of his commentary in a letter I wrote to the Dominion Post:

Tim Pankhurst (Free speech pairs with fairness, May 26) is quite wrong when he alleges “Islam in its purest form is a peaceful religion.”  Islam is a religion that demands submission.  Peace will only be achieved when the entire world submits to the will of Allah and is ruled by sharia law.  Anything other than that occupies dar al-Harb, the territory of war, which permits precisely what has occurred in the Islamic caliphate and the offices of Charlie Hebdo.

I’ve noticed that if I mention Islamic doctrine in a letter, the Dominion Post declines to print it.  But the Dominion Post did print two letters from other correspondents, one simply supporting free speech and quoting Voltaire, and another from a Muslim suggesting “freedom of expression is not absolute” and that Muslims are more against “slander and abuse” in a statement of incipient grievance-mongering.

All three missed the point about Muslims’ antagonism to the West’s concept of freedom of expression.

On that basis I wrote another letter:

Tim Pankhurst (Opinion May 26) and his corresponding acolyte Michael Poole (Letters May 28), and eristic, Fawzan Hafiz (Letters May 29), need to realise that attacks on cartoonists aren’t a simple matter of attacks on freedom of speech.  Their primary purpose is to prevent any criticism of Islam, under threat of death.  This is what has stopped Islam’s reform for 1,400 years and why it has not progressed morally since.

Of my letters to the Dominion Post, only those showing minor personal opinion are printed.  Those that used accurate and verifiable concepts such as terror and lure (tarhib wal targhib), dissembling or concealment (tawriya), or the ‘oneness’ of Allah and its sole representation through fundamentalist Islam (tawhid), were not printed.

The Dominion Post publishes news of the most horrendous acts of Islamic violence, but fails to print anything which states clearly the reasons behind them.