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Finally, the Anti-racist Center has decided to try to stop the street violence. Perhaps they should also look in more detail at who benefits from free speech.
After two weeks of violent demonstrations and street fights against the police, the leader Rune Berglund Steen of the Anti-Racist Center takes the self-criticism:
– We have neglected it. This is something we should have done before, he tells Klassekampen, noting that he and the center will now try to bring together leftist parties and organizations to stop the senseless violence around SIAN demonstrations.
It was time for jaggu, many would say. Or if we are going to be generous: better late than never. But then the center must also attempt a slightly broader analysis of democracy and freedom of expression.
Because in the heated debate over SIAN (Stop the Islamization of Norway) and the associated counter-actions, a lot of strange things have happened. I have previously written about well-meaning commentators in liberal newspapers who suddenly understand so deeply that young, frustrated Muslims only HAVE to resort to violence when provoked.
READ ALSO: The noise SIAN: Useful idiots are praised by the media
But the cake goes to gender researcher Jørgen Lorentzen, who in Aftenposten two days ago equated statements and violence.
Here it is tempting to quote former Storting President Carl Joachim Hambro (H), who spoke the winged words that “everyone must be allowed to express at all times the confusion that prevails in the head.”
His touch of irony certainly fits in well as a defense of SIAN’s right to shout insults at the Qur’an. But also for Lorentzen’s right to write articles on Aftenposten.
The online newspaper’s regular columnist, Mahmoud Farahmand, has already wisely written about Lorentzen’s lifeless theory that if only the police had not protected anti-Muslim activists, they would not have dared to demonstrate.
READ ALSO: When the police protect SIAN, they protect democracy
Equally odd, but also a bit off putting, is that he equates abusive expressions with violence. Especially considering the Charlie Hebdo trial taking place in Paris this week.
By Lorentzen’s logic, hate speech can also be violence, especially scripture desecration:
“Breaking the Quran into pieces is also violence: violence against literature, against the group that holds this as their holy book, and ultimately it is violence against the god that millions of people worship.”
So writes Lorentzen. For me, it is almost incomprehensible that a Norwegian academic does not see the consequence when comparing provocative actions or statements = violence.
In the final analysis, this means that the 12 cartoonists and members of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial team who were killed in the massacre five years ago had themselves to thank. They insulted the Prophet with their cartoons, no wonder the terrorists responded with violence!
But the strangest thing is that a researcher who places himself to the left in the Norwegian debate, does not see that it is the labor movement and the majority of people who in the last hundred years have benefited the most from freedom of expression and the right to Demonstrate, strike and provoke.
In particular, provocative statements and deliberate rape have played an invaluable role in our own “historical-religious” development.
One of the first was Arnulf Øverland’s poem “Wipe the Christian cross off your flag and raise it clean and red!” almost 90 years ago. At the time, a scandalous provocation, and many saw it as an attack on God Himself.
45 years later, and much more conciliatory:
Rolv Wesenlund and Harald Heide Steens deal with the nice Vacation Bishop Fjertnes. Innocent yes, but do not doubt for a moment that there were hailstorms of complaints to the Broadcasting Council, and that there was a rush through the most remote settlements of the biblical belt along the coast: did they really dare to make peace with the clergy? In NRK?
Image from The Life of Bryan, Rolf Wesenlund and Otto Jespersen by Monty Python.
Photo: NTB scanpix
Not to mention Britain’s Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” just a few years later, which was actually banned in Norway until October 1980, because it “violated religious sentiments.”
Or the more brutal making of Otto Jespersen, who drank from the baptismal font, broke a hymn book and a roast chicken in primus in the church of Kampen 20 years ago. NRK had to apologize, however the law and the law He was never in the photo.
All of these “violations” have in common that they helped pave the way for a more open society, where everyone can breathe easier.
“Religions have a big problem with laughter,” says current editor of Charlie Hebdo, who yesterday republished the cartoons that caused such a stir.
They did this to emphasize that terrorists and censorship forces must not win.
Yes, but these examples are humorous, you say. It is something completely different than nauseating in Furuset or burning the Quran in Kristiansand.
Yes it is. Wesensteen, Monty Python, and Otto Jespersen are clever humor. SIAN’s need to cause nausea is closer to idiocy.
Read more comments from Erik Stephansen
But the problem is that the law or the law does not distinguish between good and bad humor, or between intelligent provocations or bad taste. If we are going to prohibit the burning of the Holy Scriptures, it is also natural to prohibit the burning of the holy prophets. And don’t hesitate for a moment:
Some of the dark men from the inner valleys, who today are fortunately stripped of most of their influence, seemed no Brian was funny when he hung on the cross and sang “Always look on the bright side of life.” This was no humor!
However, the most important thing is this:
The best anti-racist work we can do today is to support the forces of young and enlightened Muslims working to modernize Islam. They have me Need to be able to refer to a climate of open expression, both before society in general and internally in congregations and organizations.
They can also me they feel the need for well-directed provocations and insults against their own rulers in the fight against the culture of honor and the old-fashioned patriarchal culture. So that they too can breathe more freely.
This is not understood by the perpetrators who throw stones at the police, nor by the supporters who seek the maximization of problems and crises. But the Anti-Racist Center should be able to explain them, perhaps in collaboration with, for example, extremism researcher Lars Gule and former union leader Rolf Utgård, who have positively participated in this fight.
Good provocations move the world forward. Bad provocations must be met with statements or silently ignored.
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