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Both spent the better part of their lives in the limelight, and were recently adorned with the highest honor of the land. But among a transatlantic community of common roots, one courted controversy and faced government persecution, while the other wallowed in constant public praise and state adoration.
This month, Canadian physician and abortion advocate Henry Morgentaler won the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour. One year ago, British novelist Salman Rushdie was accorded the U.K. equivalent, a knighthood. The public involvement of both men and the subject matter of their work or activism are quite distinct but their life trajectories share common features. If any lessons can be drawn from comparing the public perceptions that accompanied these trajectories, it is this: Winning a case in the court of public opinion may have little to do with one’s courage to change the status quo, and everything to do with whose status quo one is challenging.
1) Both Morgentaler and Rushdie challenged the status quo and offended the sentiments of a religious establishment and its followers. Rushdie incurred the wrath of devout Muslims when they learned of his blasphemous novel Satanic Verses. He was largely maligned in the press in the Muslim and Arab world. Morgentaler infuriated do-good Christians and was vilified among Christian conservative circles and the right-wing press.
2) Both went through personal trials and tribulations and at times, their lives were in immanent danger. Rushdie was “sentenced” to death by the head of the Iranian state Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and lived in hiding for many years fearing for his life. (The U.K. government spent an estimated 10 million pounds to protect him.) Meanwhile, Morgentaler was arrested and jailed by the Canadian authorities, was physically attacked by a disgruntled “pro-life” activist, and one of his abortion clinics was bombed in the early 90’s
3) Both men became household names in the course of their attempt to uphold what they believed in. The Ayatollah’s verdict against the Indian-born novelist catapulted Rushdie to fame and turned his works into international bestsellers. Morgentaler’s refusal to abide by Canadian law and his outspoken public appearances rallied millions to his cause and transformed him into the poster child of the pro-choice camp.
4) Finally, both men eventually won official recognition for their lifetime achievements. However, the apparent commonality between the legacies of both men does not seem to translate to the way their work is debated in public. Knighting Rushdie was reduced from an acknowledgement of a life-time of storytelling to an enlightened celebration of freedom of speech against the dark forces of a backward and intolerant religious doctrine. Reporting his knighthood was rarely mentioned without an immediate reference to the death “fatwa” against him. If there were any dissenting voices or critiques of the wisdom of the decision to knight him (while decrying that of calling for his death), they belonged outside the polity of rational discourse and tolerance of the other, to a place where rage easily supplants reason and anger replaces anxiety, in short, to that imagined community of a monolithic Islamic culture, where disputes are restricted to mob gatherings on the street or to declarations of jihad on obscure websites or by state-sponsored religious institutions. Meanwhile, the decision to anoint Morgentaler as a civil hero was rarely portrayed as a long overdue celebration of women’s rights without being cited as controversial. Opposition to granting him the order, even from religious groups, fell within the realm of freedom of opinion, not religious fanaticism or sexism and intolerance.
The stark gap between the framing of each debate is hard to reconcile with perceived notions of fair and balanced public discourse in the “free” world. But it is more understandable once we recognize that what matters is whose ideals each man was undermining. The doctor was in the beast’s belly while fighting to cure one of its ills, while the literary critic chose to point at the ills of the beast next door, while playing down the ills of those hailing him for speaking out. All of this is neither to rank the achievements of either man nor to incriminate them in the slightest way. They lived the life they believed in. It is simply to remind ourselves that double standards of judgment are alive and well amongst us and that in the court of public opinion, all too often, the real culprits may be none other than…the members of the jury.
The author wishes to thank Diana Younes for her helpful insights and valuable feedback on the subject.
3 Comments
Hicham, you appear to be following Said's lead in deconstructing the "imagined community of a monolithic Islamic culture." But, in this post, haven't you just imagined an equally monolithic "transatlantic community" possessed of a uniform "status quo"? It's a little hard to figure out what you're arguing the public responses to Morgentaler and Rushdie should have been -- but to say that the former was a controversial catalyst of change while the latter merely "wallowed" in praise is just plain wrong.
Rushdie (albeit somewhat indirectly) stimulated debate on blasphemy law in the U.K. that, at the time, was in force but applied only to blasphemy against the Church of England. Such a law, in a pluralistic society, is patently discriminatory, which was recognized in a 2002 Select Committee report. Following the report, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 was passed, criminalizing incitement to religious hatred and, in May 2008, the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished.
The Racial and Religious Hatred Act has been controversial (contrary to your imagined "double standard"), but it at the very least recognized the tension between free speech and public order, and the need to steer between the equally real dangers of chilling legitimate criticism and stirring up hatred against racial and religious minorities.
Here in Canada, the recent controversy over the Maclean's case has also raised serious questions about where the boundaries between free speech and hate speech lie. Clearly, the norms of both free speech and tolerance are being hotly contested, and your depiction of double standard of the "transatlantic community," whatever that is, has little basis in reality. In what sense, then, should the members of the jury view themselves as "culprits"?
James, you refer to the racial and religious hatred act of 2006 in the U.K. and other legal and official reports on the matter. I was not aware of them but they would have certainly helped my argument. One would be hardpressed to find a constant critical juxtaposition of news of Rushdie's knighthood and those laws and reports in mainstream media (At least those accessible to Canadian public-including main British publications). Not so when it comes to linking Morgentaler and supreme court decisions. Rushdie was honoured by a state body DESPITE those legal caveats and no influential pundit or mainstream report seemed overly concerned about that. Meanwhile, the Canadian government in the person of Harper distanced itself from the decision to honour Morgentaler INSPITE of the supreme court's vindication of his claim. Keep in mind that I am speaking of the PUBLIC trial of both men. The U.S. legal literature has tons of acts, reports, and decisions against anti-black racism. But no one claims this means that public perceptions and facts about blacks have ceased to be racist at times.
As per transatlantic community of common roots, i meant to say communities (my fault), other wise it would be redundant to make the "common roots" point. I am fully aware of the differences, and perhaps I should have even said transatlantic publics...I don't claim that any community is monolithic but again to compare lumping the two with seeing Islam as a monolithic culture is to ignore history. Canada's political community (at least the Anglophone element) is intimately tied to that of Britain, something that is entirely false when we compare Morocco and Indonesia for instance.
In sum, the question is how the two recognition events were framed in public discourse, not whether there were dissenting voices here and there or some form of controversy swirling around them. The reference of existence of some dissent as proof of a lack of double standards has been a mantra of mainstream liberal democratic debate that does little to address the double standards problem. ( It is how often and in which tone you are allowed to speak out that counts, not the token space you get)
The double standards are alive and well, are based on whose status quo you are challenging, and apply to societies all over (that was the lesson i tried to draw). But in those of North America and Western Europe, when it comes to religious communities, it is the Muslim's turn... and if blaming the jury of public opinion was inaccurate, it is because i failed to add someone else to the list, the prosecutor that has managed to constantly mislead and influence the jury: the mainstream media.
Hicham,
Thank you for your response and the clarifications you have provided. Assuming, for the sake of argument, similar social contexts in Britain and North America (though "common roots" proves little, as the apple often falls far from the tree), could it not be that the different public responses to Morgentaler and Rushdie stem not from racism, but from the issues themselves? Abortion continues to be a sensitive issue, with entrenched positions on both sides of the debate. Blasphemy, on the other hand, has not been considered a serious social question since, at the extreme latest, the early fifties when blasphemy laws were held by the US Supreme Court to be an unconstitutional restraint on freedom of speech. When it comes to perceptions, therefore, many members of the public see the imposition of the death penalty for blasphemy in (historically and politically unrelated) countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. as an anachronism. How would you explain to someone the connection between these countries that impose the severest penalties on intemperate remarks about the divine?
Second, there are a couple strands of your argument that need unraveling. I don't think the double standard in "mainstream liberal democratic debate" is between the public and the Muslim, but between liberal society and "fundamentalists" (the usual term of opprobrium). For example, conservative Anglicans who wish to see neither women nor gays as bishops are vilified in the court of public opinion. The reason for this, as Charles Taylor points out, is that liberal society is profoundly secular and admits of no higher authority than democratic discourse itself. Those who see their sacred texts as having a more ultimate authority than that discourse and its conclusions (including fundamentalist Christians and most Muslims, as I understand the teaching of Islam), stand outside the conversation. It is little surprise that they don't get a "fair hearing" -- the most they can hope for is grudging tolerance. For them to have a real voice, on the basis of their beliefs, would undermine the secular basis of liberalism itself.
The other strand is the globalized nature of fundamentalisms. It is hard to dispute that the discourse of (sometimes violent) jihad has appeared in many countries that are otherwise unrelated historically or politically. While these discourses are often addressed toward local conditions, the characteristics of that discourse are global, although I would describe the discourse itself as fragmented and transitory rather than monolithic. The particular religious identity of globalized fundamentalisms, however, is almost less important than the phenomenon itself, which crosses belief systems. To again use the example of conservative Anglicans, it is no accident that "biblical" Anglicanism (to use its own terms) in North America and Europe makes common cause with similarly-minded Anglicans in Latin America and Africa.
The twin phenomenon of secular liberalism and globalized fundamentalisms are meeting in a perfect storm, where those at the interstices of its clash -- which at this point (and perhaps at any time of social upheaval) consist mainly, and unfortunately, of otherwise law-abiding and peaceful citizens -- are bearing the brunt of the confrontation.
In my opinion, this is a more satisfying explanation than the rather thin gruel of "systemic racism" or "objectification of the other." And while satisfying explanations solve nothing, they at least avoid distracting name & blame exercises.