Hypocrisy Of Free Speech: By The Powerful, For The Powerful, Against The Powerless

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It is crucial that we maintain some principles such as the freedom of expression, since the right is, by any means, essential to every individual. As much as we disagree with one another, this fundamental right should be upheld.

The problem however arises when this right is abused and the powerless minorities in an already toxic environment are affected by it. Charlie Hebdo was stigmatising Muslims and, in the West today, there is an apparent normalisation and standardisation of this discourse. In fact, political parties, in particular far right groups, are ‘Islamising’ every issue.

After the tragic events, we saw some of the hypocritical world leaders march for the same free speech which they often oppress. The King of Jordan, who sentenced a Palestinian Journalist to 15 years in prison last year; Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose forces killed 17 journalists in Gaza last year; Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Shoukry, who detained Al Jazeera staff as well as detaining Journalist Shawkan. Surely, if the UK government was any better and truly upholds absolute free speech it would not have forced the Guardian to destroy the hard disk containing the Snowden files either.

No Apology: Islam And ISIS, A Contradiction

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After 9/11, and the purported responsibility of Islam as the event’s driving ideology, it could have been predicted that there would be anti-Muslim sentiments. However, one could have never guessed that 13 years later Muslims would be viewed far worse than in those first few months.

In fact, Islamophobia has seen a drastic increase in correlation to other global events — ironically, even when Muslims themselves are the victims. A recent example is the hanging of Reyhanah Jebbari in Iran and the convoluted reaction against Muslims that resulted.

Yet such reactions have extended past verbal abuse and now encompass an institutionalised practice of sweeping generalisations in favour of vilifying Muslims and Islam and an absurd lack of regard to individualism within human nature. It’s reminiscent of justifications used for previous disasters and an ironic reflection of what “terror” groups themselves teach, and forces Muslim-response campaigns which under any absence of such embarrassing double standards would not be necessary.

Racism: Is It Inherent or Learned?

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To reason that all beings are inherently racist is beyond the scope of credibility. Before the development of transportation, it was virtually impossible for different racial groups to have interacted. Thus it can be construed that it is not plausible that the human lineage, through evolution, acclimatised an intuitive and inherent response to individuals of different racial groups.

Nevertheless, individuals who choose to contest that racism is indeed inherent have made every effort to bolster their outlook with suggestions that racism is biological in origin. Even so, the correlation between psychological responses and biological relations do not tell us whether the responses are categorically innate.