Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Boundless Freedom of Expression

It is the belief and desire of some that there should be complete freedom of expression. We should not sit on the fence, they say, either it is free or not free. Hence is the promotion of freedom of expression.

Not so long ago, President Musharraf supported the same ideology. Soon enough the language, dresses and moves of our artists changed on the television screens. There was a hue and cry upon it by the religio-oriented of the society. However, the seculars welcomed the change with much applause.

Not long after, in a matter of five to six years, the freedom of expression turned into a monster for its own champion, Pervaiz Musharraf. This was the year 2007 and the free media was hailing Pervaiz Musharraf for his tyranny. In a desperate attempt, Pervaiz Musharraf imposed the Emergency of Nov 3, and banned the transmission of free media channels.

People were forced to tune to the government channel PTV for news update. There sat three to four people discussing morality and how the idea of rein-free freedom was absurd and nowhere in the world did freedom exist without some moral guidelines.

Pervaiz Musharraf was right this time in the message he was sending out, only he had applied it topsy-turvy. The moral guidelines are due where God has defined morality, i.e. in language, dresses, moves, etc. However, the morality protection that he was seeking for himself, would in fact not support him, for the morality defined for a tyrannical rule is one and only, the straight forward truth, though in respectable words of course.

"The best of Jihad is to speak the true word in front of a tyrannical ruler." [Hadith]

This was what the media had done, for which it was punished.

'My best friend is one who tells me my bad points.' [Quote of Caliph Umar RA]

And see how the women of Prophet Muhammed SAW's times were liberated enough to speak their thoughts. Caliph Umar RA once gave instructions to limit the amount of Haq Mahr given to brides by the husbands to a certain amount and not beyond that. Upon this a woman stood up and said 'O'Umar RA, Prophet Muhammed SAW set no limits for it, then why are you limiting it?' And she quoted "...even if it be a heap of gold" [Surah Al-Nisa, Verse 20].

Hence, Islam very much supports freedom of expression, but neither rudeness nor vulgarity as part of it.

If this is backwardness in the eyes of some, they should keep in mind that their idea of freedom of expression will certainly turn around on them from whichever direction whatsoever, like it did on Pervaiz Musharraf, who used to address the religio-oriented flippantly and say 'If you do not like what you see, change the channel...'. Why could not he do the same then when he came in the view of this freedom?

May Allah SWT guide him and forgive him, the objective is not to demean Pervaiz Musharraf, but to give a visible example from the recent past.

The thoughtless pursuit of boundary-free freedom of expression by some may bring around those times very soon when we hear children telling their parents 'To go to hell...' when they chide them and draw nude pictures of their parents in art classes.

Why not? It is freedom of expression.

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