Leader

NST Leader: Free to hate?

TODAY, close to two billion Muslims around the world celebrate Maulidur Rasul, the birthday of the most revered man in Islam, Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.).

Yet, politicians in France, led by its president, Emmanuel Macron, have timed the moment to caricature the man and the religion that he spread to the world 1,431 years ago.

We hope politicians like Macron and Gert Wilder in Holland are doing it out of ignorance. Because hatred can be cured by education. This is why our Religious Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Dr Zulkifli Mohamad al-Bakri gifted the book, The Sublime Qualities of the Prophet Muhammad, to the French ambassador here. Consider this a Muslim generosity.

Not unlike the one shown by Prophet Isa (pbuh), or Jesus Christ (pbuh) to the Christians, more than 2,000 years ago.

The learned will know where free speech ends and hate speech begins. Admittedly, there is no international legal definition of hate speech.

But here is one sanctioned by the United Nations: any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.

The words and behaviour of Macron, Gilder and people of the ilk are surely one of these, if not all.

If the caricature of the Prophet and Islam is motivated not by ignorance but by some evil design then we are in dangerous territory.

A heart that is filled with hatred is a devil's workshop. To these troubled souls, we recommend some worldly literature. Consider just one: the UN Charter. An "Idiot's Guide to the UN Charter", if there is one, would put the raison d'être of the world body thus: to end the scourge of war and hate speech.

The first is common knowledge, but the second, many give it a miss. The preamble to the UN Charter jogs the memory of the latter in these words of its second mission: to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.

This is no surprise. After all, this 75-year-old charter was drafted not long after German hate speech against the Jews ended in the Holocaust. But as the UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the assembly of men and women gathered at the launch of the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech on June 18 last year in New York, "we are in danger of forgetting this lesson".

He spelt out his fear thus: "In both liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes, some political leaders are bringing the hate-fuelled ideas and language of these groups into the mainstream, normalising them, coarsening the public discourse and weakening the social fabric."

There is a Macron and Wilder somewhere there. Yet, there is no word from the UN on Macron and Gilder's hate speech. This notwithstanding, Guterres's language in the foreward to the hate speech action plan is a call to action: "As a matter of principle, the UN must confront hate speech at every turn.

Silence can signal indifference to bigotry and intolerance, even as a situation escalates and the vulnerable become victims." Now the vulnerable have become victims, where is the UN?

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