Freedom of expression lives where offence begins: In defence of Ibtissame Betty Lachgar

Freedom of expression lives where offence begins. To offend is to question certainty, to strip the sacred of its privilege, and to laugh in the face of fear and threats. A society that bans offence bans thought itself.

Morocco is the latest case in point. Since 10 August, feminist and human rights activist Ibtissame Betty Lachgar has been in prison because of an ‘Allah is Lesbian’ t-shirt she has worn for years. What changed was not the t-shirt but the cyber-threats she received after she posted another photo of herself wearing it at the end of July. Anonymous accounts linked to a coordinated campaign by the ‘Moorish identity movement’, a far-right network known for cyber-harassment, issued countless rape and death threats, even tagging Morocco’s National Security. Prosecutors responded not by protecting Betty from the incitement to violence, but by persecuting her.

On 10 August, she was arrested in Rabat and charged under Article 267-5 of the Penal Code for ‘offending Islam’. She faces up to five years in prison. Her trial, scheduled first for 27 August, has been postponed twice to 3 September—i.e. today, if it goes ahead. In the meantime, as a cancer survivor requiring urgent surgery, she remains in pre-trial detention and isolation, her health at risk.

Let’s be clear: Ibtissame Betty Lachgar is in prison in Morocco not because she harmed anyone, but because of her t-shirt. For that, she is being persecuted and prosecuted, whilst those who threatened her with rape and death walk free. It is always the freethinker who is silenced, never the baying mob calling for blood.

The arguments made against her—that she insulted Islam, endangered public order, or incited hate against Muslims—do not withstand scrutiny. Islam, like Christianity or any other faith, is an idea that not everyone in Morocco subscribes to. To criminalise dissent is to give ideas rights they cannot have, whilst stripping individuals of rights they must. Public order cannot be a justification when the threats come not from the speaker but from her opponents. And her slogan did not target Muslims; it targeted a belief.

To speak of ‘insulting Islam’ is to purposefully obfuscate the nature of ideas. People have dignity and rights; ideas do not. People must be protected from harm; ideas must be exposed to scrutiny. That distinction is key. Galileo was punished by the Catholic Church for saying the Earth turned around the Sun; Spinoza was cast out of his Jewish community for questioning scripture. Ibn Rushd defended reason against dogma in the twelfth century and was exiled, while his works were burned in Cordoba. The list goes on and on. This has always been the privilege of religion: to be shielded from the criticism that all ideas must face.

Much of the outrage has fixated on the word ‘lesbian’. Yet what is so wrong with being a lesbian? God is almost universally imagined as male without objection. To imagine God as female or lesbian is deemed offensive because it challenges patriarchal norms. As an aside, the region’s history is filled with female deities: for example, Tanit, worshipped from the fifth century BCE across North Africa, including at Volubilis in Morocco, and the pre-Islamic Arabian goddesses Al-Lāt, Al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt, worshipped until the seventh century CE. The notion of the female divine is not alien to human heritage. That a female and lesbian Allah ‘offends’ says volumes about the deep-seated misogyny of the ‘offended’.

And let’s not forget who we are speaking about: Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, a Moroccan psychologist, feminist, and co-founder of the Mouvement alternatif pour les libertés individuelles (MALI). For over fifteen years she has been Morocco’s most outspoken secular and feminist voice, challenging coercive fasting laws with a ‘Ramadan picnic’ in 2009 and defending teenagers prosecuted for a kiss with a ‘kiss-in’ protest in 2013, all the while campaigning for abortion rights, LGBT equality, and women’s bodily autonomy. She is also one of the country’s very few openly atheist public figures.

Betty Lachgar’s persecution rewards those who threaten her while punishing the target of their threats. It places dogma above justice and tells Moroccan citizens that they are free only to echo orthodoxy, not to dissent. But free expression cannot exist only for the faithful to condemn the apostate and blasphemer. It must also protect the dissenter’s right to question, doubt, and dissent.

Throughout history, from east to west, those who dared to speak outside religious orthodoxy have been branded heretics and apostates and punished. Yet it is their questions that have carried human thought forward. The struggle to doubt and dissent against dogma is a struggle for knowledge, for equality, for the right to be fully human. Betty Lachgar stands in this lineage of truth-tellers. To defend her is to defend our own right to doubt, to question, and to think freely.

Find out more about and join the Ex-Muslims International campaign to #FreeBetty.

Read the letter sent to the government of Morocco by Ex-Muslims International here. An excerpt:

As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Morocco has obligations to protect freedom of thought, conscience, belief, and expression. The UN Human Rights Committee makes clear that blasphemy laws are incompatible with these protections. Whilst many in Morocco believe in Islam, many others don’t. The state is duty-bound to protect the freedom of expression of believers and non-believers alike.

We therefore urgently call on the Moroccan authorities to:
– Immediately and unconditionally release Ibtissame Betty Lachgar.
– Drop all charges that criminalise peaceful belief and expression.
– Guarantee Betty’s access to proper medical care and ensure her protection from harassment and threats.

Related reading

Image of the week: ‘Allah is lesbian’ (#FreeBetty), by Daniel James Sharp