"People could categorise me how they want, I am not perfect, but I have never done anything violent in my life. You see this thing called my mouth? That is where my power lies: I am not afraid to say it as it is." So said Mr Inshan Ishmael in the wake of his arrest in January 2007. Why he was arrested was the subject of some dispute. He was initially told, after being strip-searched by the police, that he was being held under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The actual charge laid was circulating handbills (flyers) without the names and addresses of printer and publisher, which apparently is illegal.
The real reason for the arrest was Mr Ishmael's television show, Breaking Barriers, which aired in the Islamic Broadcasting Network, which was critical of the then government. It, and he, enjoyed a huge following as crime was rampant, the police were AWOL and the society was in terror.
In the wake of Mr Ishmael's arrest and prosecution, the cable company pulled his show. This newspaper editorialized at the time (January 27, 2007): "the Government and the Commissioner of Police now have a responsibility to convince many in the national population there was no collusion between them to arrest and charge Inshan Ishmael."
(Incidentally, the "government" then was the PNM led and embodied in the late, and present candidate for canonization, Mr Patrick Manning. But I digress.)
This was the same Inshan Ishmael who led two protest outside the compound of the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian, demanding the removal of the Guardian editor-in-chief, Orin Gordon and columnist Kevin Baldeosingh. The reason is a column published in the Guardian, written by Baldeosingh, on July 6, the day of Eid, headlined "How Not to be Killed by Islamists".
Initially, I hadn't read past the first couple of paragraphs of the column before moving on. This is fairly standard fare for Baldeosingh. A couple of weeks previously, he had addressed Pastor Winston Cuffie in much the same tone, and before Pastor Clive Dottin and Mr Sat Maharaj and various other religious figures. But the protest sent me back to it. So far as I could see, no specific person was mentioned, which for Baldeosingh is some kind of record for restraint.
But it was too much for Mr Ishmael, who was insulted enough to organize a protest, and pooh-pooh the reason of "satire". A letter from Mr Ishmael was published after the column, an apologies and so forth were published within days. Apparently this was not enough, ergo the call for the removals. This would set a dangerous precedent and I hope it is not being seriously considered. But we'll know soon enough.
(This might be a good place to disclose that I work for the ANSA McAL Group, but am not privy to the inner workings of the Guardian. I write here as an interested observer, using what's in the public domain.)
More interesting here is a curious situation, where the victim is now the oppressor. (See Paolo Freire, Eric Williams, and/or VS Naipaul: "Hate oppression. Fear the oppressed.") The glaring question is how is it that someone who was (unjustly and probably illegally arrested and prosecuted) for exercising his right to free speech could now turn around and demand the removal of two people for doing the same? He alone have mouth?
Additionally it is a bona fide press freedom issue, rich in material to extend and educate the public. But if MATT, or any of the press freedom ponces who pop up from time to time, has said anything it's escaped my admittedly casual observation.
It can't be the religious factor, since, to repeat, the Christians, Hindus, socialists, Feminists, and other secular heretics are regular targets of Baldeosingh's at times tiresome attempts at satire to no protests from Mr Ishmael.
Could it be the Muslim factor? If so, for whom does Mr Ishmael speak? The entire Muslim community, or just a small portion of it? Are Muslims to be exempt from the hurly burly of the public sphere? And one can hardly evade the consequences of institutions and countries who have disagreed with this. Charlie Hebdo and Europe as a whole are reeling from militant Islamist attacks for their conflicts with Islam.
But in Trinidad, even though we had a preview of Muslim fundamentalists taking matters into their own hands in 1990, the issue has generated no substantive discussion about the nature of Islam vs secularism. And it's unlikely that this is the last we've seen of this, as the recent killings in Enterprise, which also implicate Islam, show.
It's an uncomfortable discussion, but one that needs to be had. The axiom that in a secular society, religion is respected, but not immutable or unimpeachable is apparently not axiomatic to many in Trinidad & Tobago. The unfortunate message Mr Ishmael sent by his protest and demands, is that different rules apply to different groups organized around race, religion and politics, which are frequently inextricably fused. This isn't to say there aren't boundaries of acceptability even within a free press, and that aggrieved parties shouldn't complain or have redress. But how much redress is enough?
That sense of immunity is an all-too-common sentiment here, which fuels the anarchism and the sense of entitlement several groups nurse which (they believe) immunizes them from the conventions of public discourse. And this fact makes this the media association's moment, along with the tertiary institutions who offer degrees in journalism, and the pundits who preach the usually half-digested nonsense about press freedom. Will they take it? Unlikely. But somebody should.