Llosa on self-censorship in the West

”Many people in the West misunderstand what freedom of expression means. They associate it with the restriction on the power of the government to interfere with the freedom to express oneself,” writes Alvaro Vargas Llosa.

An editor of ”Lessons from the Poor” and the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute wrote in the International Hearld Tribune:

[Freedom of expression] is really a restriction on the power of anyone to interfere with anyone else’s right to free expression, including but not limited to the government. If a business decision is made under extreme fear – directly or indirectly caused by force from a third person rather than the government – freedom of expression also suffers.

Llosa writes about a decision taken by Random House, a book publisher, to cancel publication in the United States a novel “The Jewel of Medina,” written by American author Sherry Jones.

The novel fictionalizes the relationship between the Prophet Muhammad and his youngest bride, Aisha. After paying the author a significant advance and making plans for the release of the book, Random House sent copies of the galleys to various scholars, some of whom told the publisher that the content distorted history, would inflame Muslims and could cause much trouble. Security experts were also consulted. Random House decided to cancel publication of Jones’ work, invoking reasons of “safety.”

”Any time, any place in which the threat of violence inhibits the exercise of free expression, the imperfect freedoms of Western civilization that so many people around the world struggle to imitate are in danger…

The book’s content – which has been described, promisingly, as being full of sex and violence – is irrelevant to the discussion. It may well be, as one scholar who read it contends, that “The Jewel of Medina” is pure trash. And in any case, a book of historical fiction should never be judged on its accuracy. Great novels such as Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” and Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian” are all “inaccurate”…

The problem is not whether Random House was entitled to its decision, but what the decision to go against its own desire to publish the book tells us about the fear that fanaticism has instilled in Western countries through systematic acts of intolerance…

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