Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 by Thomas L. Friedman

Author:Thomas L. Friedman [Friedman, Thomas L.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

The Free-Speech Bind

So here’s an interesting moral dilemma: I got e-mails last week from Saudi and Egyptian friends encouraging me to write a column about the Saudi poet who had been thrown in jail for writing a fiery poem attacking Saudi judges as corrupt.

The Saudi poet, Abdul Mohsen Musalam, in his poem “The Corrupt on Earth,” published March 10 in the newspaper Al-Medina, wrote: “It is sad that in the Muslim world, justice is suffering from a few judges who care for nothing but their bank accounts and their status with the rulers.” He then added, with amazing bluntness about the judges: “Your beards are smeared with blood. You indulge a thousand tyrants and only the tyrant do you obey.”

Not only did the Saudi interior minister throw Mr. Musalam in jail for this poem, but his editor, Mokhtar al-Fal, was fired. So what’s my dilemma? I should be all for free speech—right?—especially in Saudi Arabia.

Not so fast. By accident, I met this poet on a recent trip to Saudi Arabia and I tasted some other free speech he has in him. Readers may recall that I noted in an earlier column that at one newspaper I visited in Saudi Arabia, I walked out after being told that the source of all the problems today was that “the Jews control America.” The newspaper was Al-Medina, and the person who said that to me, during a discussion, was Mr. Musalam. (His editor, who apologized for him, was a good person, and I hope he gets his job back.)

So what to do?

The only thing to do is to call on the Saudis to release Mr. Musalam—not for his sake, but because a government that is afraid of a poem only shows itself to be insecure, and as tyrannical as the poet charged. His charges should be answered—but don’t throw him in jail.

This incident, though, actually highlights a larger dilemma: At the Arab summit meeting now being held in Beirut, not one of the twenty-two Arab leaders represented has been elected in a free and fair balloting. But some experts ask: Why would we want to foster democracy and a free press in that part of the world when we know that many of those who would be elected or free to write would be incredibly hostile to us? After all, we may not like everything that Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or the al-Saud ruling family in Saudi Arabia do—but they are more liberal and pro-American than many of their people.

That’s true, but September 11 demonstrates how dangerous it is for us to rely on that. Because the pro-Americanism of these Arab leaders is being bought at a price of keeping their own people so angry, so without voice, and so frustrated by corruption that they are enraged at both their regimes and us. Stability in these countries is achieved by these regimes’ letting their people have free speech only to attack America and Israel.

After all, the newspaper Al-Riyadh recently published an article by a

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