Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Warburton Nigel

Author:Warburton, Nigel [Warburton, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2009-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

My message was that the Quran is an act of man, not of God. We should be free to interpret it; we should be permitted to apply it to the modern era in a different way, instead of performing painful contortions to try to recreate the circumstances of a horrible past. My intention was to liberate Muslim minds so that Muslim women—and Muslim men, too—might be freer.

This is a radical message within orthodox Islam. Some Muslim leaders thought it an act of sacrilege and a deliberate provocation and denounced it. From Ali’s point of view, however, this was not her intention in the film; she was explicit about this in the original text of the script she took to Theo van Gogh, where she wrote: ‘I did not write this script to provoke anyone’. In a response to those who criticized her film, she responded that it was a plea for self-reflection within Islam, and that every form of self-expression should be allowed—except for physical and verbal abuse—in the pursuit of this self-reflection. Her aim was not to turn Muslims into atheists, but ‘to expose the blemishes of the culture, particularly in its cruel treatment of women’. She knew her film would be controversial. In making the film, however, she was acting well within the law in a country with a long history of protecting and valuing free expression.

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